It is the fourth exhibition by Thy in Belgium.
The black-and-white artworks were created with wavelengthprints on do (Poonah) paper, a brand-new painting technique. Some of theartworks portray his grandparents, while some others illustrate his memories about Vietnamese villages with water buffaloes and bamboo trees,chopsticks in Vietnamese meals, and others.
Thy said though he was born and raised in Belgium, healways wants to explore the social structures of the cultural identity concept.Being a Vietnamese-Belgian makes him aspire to discover the cultural diversityhe himself experiences every day, in both the Vietnamese and Belgian ways, hesaid, adding that he wants to learn about his roots, where his grandparents andparents were born.
Speaking at the launch of the exhibition, VietnameseAmbassador to Belgium Nguyen Van Thao said he was moved by Thy’s works andthat he hopes the second-generation Vietnamese in Belgium will uphold theirlove for the fatherland, preserve cultural identity and promote the Vietnameseculture among international friends.
Thy Nguyen Truong Minh is a painter involvedin artistic projects, which focus on multiculturalism.
He has a degree in Fine Arts, visual and spatial, from Brussels-basedERG School of Graphic Research. Born in the Belgian capital city in 1982 toVietnamese parents, he later decided to live between Brussels and Ho Chi MinhCity.
He is also co-founder of “La centrifugeuse” or “May xaysinh to” (The centrifuge), an international art programme involving art schoolsjointly conducted by French-speaking Belgian community in Wallonie-Brussels andVietnam in HCM City.
He is also a lecture in visual arts at HCM City Universityof Fine Arts./.