BIOGRAPHY / THÔNG TIN NGHỆ SỸ 

Ly Hoàng Ly

Ly Hoàng Ly, (real name Hoang, Ly, born in Hanoi, now based in Hochiminh City) is a multidisciplinary artist working across poetry, painting, video, performance art, artist’s book, installation and public art. Ly graduated from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts in 1999, received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2011 and earned her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), majoring in Sculpture in 2013. She spent a year from 2013 to 2014 interning at the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (JFABC, SAIC). She also works as a book editor of Youth Publishing House in Ho Chi Minh City since 2000. Ly is the first woman visual artist in Vietnam doing performance art and poetry performance. Her installations incorporate a level of performance or activation between subjects and objects that unlock sensual affects in the human-materiality nexus.

Ly’s previous works make bodily references to women’s cultural experiences of maternity and ministrations as well as highlight human emotions and our relationship to place and nature. Since 2011, Ly has explored the relationship of freedom and surveillance, inherited trauma, the ephemeral materiality of memory, the dislocation and the importance of community and human connection, the association of the loss of
nature and human mortality. Her art raises questions about the general human conditions, the critical states of society, and our shared issues of migration and immigration. It speaks not only on a personal level, but also on a global scale: of (mis)understandings and (mis)placement, of (trans)forming identity and being rootless, of adaptation and acceptance, of division and union, and of being human.

Ly Hoàng Ly has exhibited widely in and outside of Vietnam such as ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9)’ at Queensland Art Gallery /Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018); ‘APT Selection’ at Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago, Chile (2019); ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ – START 2017 (Saatchi Gallery, London, UK, 2017); ‘Zonas Grises – Grey Zones’ (Museo de Antioquia, Colombia, 2016-2017).
2003, 2002 and 2017 sees Ly Hoàng Ly open her most important and largest solo exhibitions in Vietnam at San Art (Ho Chi Minh City), Manzi Art Space (Ha Noi), and The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre (Ho Chi Minh City), respectively. Her public art works are collected by San Francisco Art Museum, USA, Nguyen Art Foundation, Vietnam and Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunisia.

In 2019, Ly’s public art and documentary film is presented at the exhibition ‘Bruise: Art Action and Ecology’ (RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia).

In 2016, Ly Hoàng Ly participated in two of the most distinguished exhibitions of the year in Vietnam: ‘Open door – Art through the 30 years of Renovation (1986-2016)’ and ‘Vietnam Eye’ (Hanoi, Vietnam).

In 2015 and 2016, “memory versus memory” – the ongoing project that Ly Hoàng Ly collaborates with Dr. Patricia Nguyễn was presented at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago (2016); Links Hall, Chicago (2016); Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile (2015); Quadrenniel 2015, Prague, and at Defibrillator, Chicago (2015).

In 2014 and 2020, Ly Hoàng Ly’s ongoing project ‘Faithfully Flat’ – in collaboration with the Field Medal mathematician, Dr. Ngô Bảo Châu – was exhibited at Vietnam Institute for Advanced study in Mathematics, Hanoi, Vietnam; Joan Flasch Artist Books Collection, SAIC, Chicago; at North Branch Projects, Chicago, USA (2014), and at Mot+++, HCMC, Vietnam (2020).

Other prominent exhibitions Ly Hoàng Ly participated are ‘People vs. Space’ (Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, USA, 2012); ‘Connect: Art Scene Vietnam’ (ifa Gallery, Berlin & Stuttgart, Germany, 2009), ‘Transpop: Korea Vietnam Remix’ (Arko Art Center, Seoul, Korea; Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco, USA; and Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 2007); ‘Identities vs. Globalisation’ (National Gallery, Bangkok; Chiang Mai University Art Museum, Thailand; and Dahlem Museum, Berlin, Germany, 2004), Busan Biennale 2002 (Busan, Korea).

Ly got national prestigious awards for her poetry. Her poems have been translated into English, Korean, Chinese and French and published in several Poetry Anthologies and Magazines in America, Korea, Taiwan and France.

Ly’s upcoming exhibitions will be presented at Virginia Tech (March 2025), University of Virginia (April 2025), and San Francisco Asian Art Museum (Nov 2025) Ly Hoàng Ly art works are in the collection of San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Queensland Art Gallery – Gallery of Modern Art, Nguyen Art Foundation, M+ Museum, Museo de Antioquia and private collections.