"Learn from it": New art exhibit sheds different light on Vietnam War

MINNEAPOLIS - An artist is shedding a different light on the Vietnam war through a new art exhibit at the Minneapolis Art Institute, one through the lens of a Vietnamese American reflecting on what happened to his home country.

The exhibit also paints peace through some of the most iconic photographs taken during the war's decades of bloodshed.

"Most people think of Vietnam as a war, but not a country or a people," artist Teo Nguyen said.

If a photograph is worth a thousand words, Nguyen said there is a lot we still haven't put into words about the second longest war in U.S. history.

"I'm hoping that we somehow can look at all these things in the past and learn from it," he said.

Photographs taken during the war are a painful reminder of the cost: the destruction, families torn apart and the countless lives lost.

"There's still a lot about Vietnam that we don't know," Nguyen said.

An accomplished landscape artist, Nguyen hopes people will take a look at the landscapes behind some of the war's most iconic images that he recreated and find peace within his paint strokes.

"I'm taking all of the weapons and the people and the dead bodies out of these because I really want to focus on the cultural and spiritual aspects of Vietnam and its people," he said.

Nguyen was born in Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay two years after the Fall of Saigon in 1975, which in American history marks the end of combat.

"Growing up in Vietnam I feared of bombs and chemicals that fell from the sky," he said. "I, like many Vietnamese children whose family members were killed, I never met my grandparents, my aunts and uncle. War didn't end once the bombing and the firing stopped. The devastations of war are long lasting even if the rest of the world forgets."

He immigrated to the United States at just 16 years old and fell in love with the power art has to move people. For years he longed to put together an exhibit that pays tribute to the Vietnamese people, but never found the right opportunity - until now.

"I feel the Vietnamese experience and perspective have been left out in all the conversations," he said.

He said the exhibit also honors those whose lives are forever frozen in monumental moments of time.

"This is my way of memorializing the lives that I believe that is still in these landscapes," he said.

Nguyen said he hopes the exhibit also offers the chance for people both American and Vietnamese to make peace with the past.

"So how can we heal?" he asked. "How can we reconcile if we're not talking about the other side?"

A peaceful future is the inspiration behind his exhibit more than six years in the making: Việt Nam Peace Project - Giấc Mơ Hòa Bình, which translates into a dream for peace.

The exhibit contains nearly 40 pieces, many of them images repainted in reference to the original and the narrative reframed both in English and in Vietnamese.

Among the collection is the 1968 execution of a Vietcong officer on the streets of Saigon. Nguyen now calls it "You are Me I am You" or "Trong Tay Nhau" in Vietnamese.

"The humanity aspect of it that I wanted to talk about," he said. "Because when you experience death a part of you dies with that person."

Also included in the exhibit is an image that many credit with ending the war - Kim Phuc, who at the age of nine was hit by napalm while running down a country road.

"I hope people will look at Vietnam in a different light," he said. "We have these cultural and spiritual aspects of it that I would like people to get to know and to learn more about."

Some pieces hang in the balance between what happened and the impacts still not fully known today, including the 14-foot installation representing the nine years the deadly chemical Agent Orange was dropped in Vietnam.

"We don't see it, but it's in the land, it's in the water and people are still dying from it ,including veterans, Americans," he said.

Perhaps the most moving are the 60 stacks of paper that sit on the gallery floor with one stack that includes the number 58,220 representing the number of Americans killed during the war. The 59 other stacks represent the estimated 3.5 million Vietnamese people killed during the war all of which are left blank because many are still unaccounted for.

Nguyen said the point is to not pin one side against the other.

"This installation is about bringing in the other side and be able to come together," he said.

He said the hope is to come together to learn from our past and to pave a peaceful way forward with a future painted with compassion and understanding for the whole picture.

"Once the bombs have been dropped and millions have been killed then that is too late so what can we look at (in) the past and understand what we're doing now because what we're doing now is really important to me," he said.

The Vietnam Peace Project is on display at the Minneapolis Art Institute until next June.