HÀ NỘI — A duo sculpture exhibition by Vietnamese artists Vũ Hữu Nhung and Trần Thược is taking place at Fairmont Hanoi Hotel in downtown Hà Nội, bringing tradition into dialogue with the present.

Working with two materials deeply rooted in Vietnamese life, ceramics and bamboo, the artists explore how tradition can remain alive and in motion, taking on new forms and meaning in contemporary life.

The exhibition, entitled VỌNG (Echoes of Heritage), grew from an affinity that extends well beyond this exhibition. Friends and fellow artists, Nhung and Thược have spent years exchanging ideas about art and a shared fascination with Vietnamese folk culture and traditional forms. They look to many of the same cultural references, yet arrive at them through distinctly different materials and sculptural languages.

For Nhung, the challenge has never been choosing between tradition and modernity, but finding a way to hold the two in balance.

“Keep too little and the tradition disappears; keep too much and the work struggles to find a new life,” he says.

Born in Phù Lãng Village in the northern province of Bắc Ninh and later trained in modern art, Nhung began what he describes as his own “revolution” in Phù Lãng ceramics more than two decades ago. The centuries-old ceramic traditional, knoww for its brown glazes, stoneware and utilitarian objects, became the starting point for his experiments with colour, form and surface, as he gradually moved beyond functional ceramics to use the medium as a material for artistic expression.

Yet experimentation has never meant leaving Phù Lãng behind. Nhung retains the tactile, rugged character of its clay and glazes while drawing from motifs and forms found in Lý and Lê dynasty art, seventeenth-century celestial figures and traditional lion imagery. These references reappear through a playful contemporary vocabulary of colour and form that retains something of the wit and spirit of Vietnamese folk art.

Thược approaches the same question from another direction. Born in the northern province of Ninh Bình in 1992, he works with a range of materials, exploring life, transformation and the traces left by time.

For VỌNG, he turns to bamboo and rattan weaving, long embedded in Vietnamese craft and everyday life, and takes it beyond its familiar functional context.

Thousands of interwoven and overlapping bamboo elements accumulate into large sculptural structures, giving a traditional material an altogether different physical presence.

For the artist, renewing heritage is also a way for Vietnamese art to articulate its own voice internationally.

“I believe Vietnamese bamboo can hold its own in a dialogue with international contemporary art. Responsible inheritance means allowing the material to be reborn, more contemporary, freer, yet still retaining the spirit of where it comes from,” he says.

Seen together, Nhung’s ceramics and Thược’s bamboo works offer two different responses to a common question: what allows heritage to stay alive? VỌNG proposes that tradition need not remain unchanged to retain its identity. It can be inherited, challenged and reshaped by each generation through the language of its own time.

The exhibition’s opening during the Mid-Autumn Festival adds a personal dimension to that conversation. This is the first time Nhung has held an exhibition during the festival, and among the works presented is a group of pieces with particular references to Hà Nội, the city where he has lived, worked and raised his family.

“VỌNG is my Mid-Autumn gift to Hà Nội, to my own childhood and to the children of today,” says Nhung.

For Fairmont Hanoi, VỌNG forms part of a longer-term commitment to supporting the arts and creating space for Vietnamese artists and creative voices to meet new audiences, both at home and internationally.

“We want Fairmont Hanoi to be a place where the creative voices of Hà Nội and Việt Nam can meet new audiences and connect with the world,” says Jean-Francois Brun, general manager of Fairmont Hanoi.

The exhibition runs until August 28 at Fairmont Hanoi, 10 Trần Nguyên Hãn, Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội. Admission is complimentary, and the exhibition is open to the public. — VNS