While known internationally as the co-curator of the 2013 Singapore Biennial, the 2016 Kuandu Biennale, and as the author of many English publications on Vietnamese contemporary art, Nguyễn Như Huy’s peers simply describe him as someone “well-versed” in art theory. They’re not wrong: over the last twenty years, the Hanoi-born artist, curator, and writer has translated many art theory publications by the likes of Walter Benjamin, Homi Bhabha, John Berger, and Clement Greenberg into Vietnamese. He was part of a team of Vietnamese experts who co-translated Howard Caygil’s ‘A Kant Dictionary’, and has been a vocal stimulator of local and regional discussions about postcolonial and postmodern readings of Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Despite Nguyễn’s impressive academic background, in this interview he’s more interested in talking about the West’s misconceptions of art in “developing” countries than his personal achievements. “Theorization remains a privilege of the West, and most of it is in English,” he says. In 2003, when Nguyễn started work on his first translation of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, it was almost impossible to find any Western writings about Vietnamese art that didn’t refer to the tropes of “censorship” and the Vietnam War. As a result, for Nguyễn Như Huy, translating art theories and igniting discussions in Vietnamese has always been an “act of survival, adaptation, and resistance.” It’s his way of dealing with the absence of written material in the country, and helping local artists to understand their position in the volatile art world.
