An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers

Over her three-decade career, An-My Lê has considered the cycles of global conflict, the consequences of diaspora, and the sensationalization of warfare. Born in Vietnam in 1960, Lê came to the United States in 1975 as a political refugee after the fall of Saigon. These experiences of war and displacement are woven throughout her work, from the black-and-white photographs taken on her first trip back to Vietnam after the war to a cyclorama-style installation of different landscapes linked by sinuous waters. The Mekong and the Mississippi—Lê’s titular rivers—become geographical touchpoints for the fluid connections between disparate places and memories.

 

Published to accompany Lê’s first museum survey in New York, An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers presents the artist’s influential photographic series alongside her textiles, installations, and films. A comprehensive essay by Roxana Marcoci and focused contributions by La Frances Hui, Joan Kee, Thy Phu, and Caitlin Ryan examine the full sweep of Lê’s artistic practice; poetic texts by the writers Monique Truong and Ocean Vuong bring a further lyrical dimension to Lê’s examination of landscape and war. 184 pp.; 222 illus.