Indochina Arts Project

The Clinton Administration recently reversed a twenty-year impasse between Vietnam and the United States, but artist C. David Thomas and his Boston-based organization, the Indochina Arts Project (IAP), have been unofficially striving to end the stalemate for years.

Restoring relations between the two former enemies requires more than lifting the trade embargo and re-establishing diplomatic ties, says Thomas, a Vietnam veteran. "The two peoples still need to meet on friendly ground, get to know each other on peaceful terms and reconcile."

Reconciliation is the galvanizing force behind IAP, which Thomas founded in 1988. Thomas, who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, realized after his tour of duty that fully mending relations between Vietnam and the United States meant developing a cultural rapport, as well as an economic and political one. While Thomas welcomes the administration's formal move to normalize relations, he says, "I would hate to see us go from knowing each other as enemies to knowing each other as only business partners. IAP's goal is to provide an educational link to understand each other's cultures."

So, after the war Thomas set out to help Americans and Vietnamese learn about the best of each other's cultures by launching his non-profit organization which develops artistic exhibitions and organizes educational exchanges. To date, IAP has put together four large-scale art shows, is designing two more installations, and is in the early stages of planning a massive arts and crafts center in Hanoi. IAP has signed an agreement with officials in Hanoi to move forward with the planning stage and hopes to secure the land where the center will be located in 1996.

The time is right, according to Thomas. After a twenty-year freeze, "The American public has forgiven Vietnam for beating us during the war," he says, pointing out that a majority of Americans supported Clinton's decision to restore relations with Vietnam. "We're willing and ready for a new image of Vietnam, we just don't know where to get it." Under Thomas's direction, IAP dedicates itself to the task of delivering fresh images of Vietnam and the countries of Indochina. Vietnam is far more than a war ravaged country, Thomas maintains, and the Vietnamese deserve to celebrate and share their country's magnificent culture with the rest of the world.

To his curatorial credit, Thomas's 1988 debut, "As Seen By Both Sides," turned out to be a landmark show. In fact, it was the first major cultural exchange between the two countries since the end of the war. The exhibit brought together Vietnamese and American artists (mostly veterans) and their eighty-two depictions of the war. "As Seen By Both Sides" intended to humanize the Vietnamese. "I wanted to show Americans that the Vietnamese got haircuts, too--that they were just like us," Thomas explains, referring to one of the most poignant pieces in the exhibit, The Haircut by Nguyen Minh Dinh. "It wasn't really an exhibit about war, it was about people and the inhumanity of war."

Many of the Vietnamese artworks were made in the field by soldiers using any materials at hand, while most of the American pieces were made by veterans after the war. In a catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Vietnamese artist Huynh Phuong Dong says, "In a minute the American bombs made forests into deserts. Agent Orange and napalm caused great destruction. You can see it in this painting, The Bloody Battle of the American Battalion at Binh Gia, 1965, I made it right after the fighting, because I might die and have no chance. I painted directly from the tube and chewed twigs to make brushes." Another artist, Nguyen Tuan Khanh (Rung) painted directly over posters or pictures from magazines; other Vietnamese artists painted on silk, or rice paper.

Reportage, or social commentary, characterizes many of the American artists' depictions of the war. Arnold Trachtman, James Cannata and Ting Ly invoke and reinterpret Eddie Adams's famous photograph of a South Vietnamese general on the verge of executing a Viet Cong suspect. For artists from both countries, creating the art was a cathartic experience. Quach Van Phong, general secretary of the Fine Arts Association, writes in the catalogue, "The war is a painful wound for the people of both countries. The artists in this exhibition seek to heal that wound through mutual understanding, which they hope will lead to a sincere and long-lasting friendship between the two people." "As Seen By Both Sides" traveled to fourteen American cities for three years before going to Vietnam for two years--garnering critical acclaim, breaking attendance records, and generating hundreds of newspaper articles along the way.

The show wasn't without controversy, however. Museum officials in both Minneapolis and San Jose canceled the exhibit as a result of pressure from Vietnamese Americans who felt it was communist propaganda, Thomas says. Both museums were severely criticized for not hanging the show. In an ironic twist of events, the San Jose Museum of Art will go ahead and mount another large-scale exhibit from IAP called, "An Ocean Apart," which is scheduled to run in 1996, and then travel nationally through 1998.

"An Ocean Apart" was organized by IAP for the Smithsonian Exhibition Travelling Service (SITES), with a grant from SITES. "Never before have the works of Vietnamese contemporary artists been exhibited alongside their American counterparts," says Thomas, who spent the past six years curating the show. "An Ocean Apart" comprises eighty works of art by forty-one contemporary Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American artists "who for decades had been separated physically and ideologically," says Anna Cohn, director of SITES. Artworks are made of indigenous Vietnamese materials such as lacquer and eggshells on wood, clay and woodcuts, and watercolors on silk, in addition to Western mediums such as photo-montage. "An Ocean Apart will do far more than to help heal old wounds, it will set people moving in an entirely new direction of cooperation and connectedness," says Cohn.

Yet, ten years ago this show couldn't possibly have been assembled, Thomas reflects. In 1986, doi moi (renovation) eased restrictions on the press, public speech, travel and many other segments of Vietnamese society, thus enabling Vietnamese Americans to gain a new perspective on their homeland, says Thomas. There's a new generation of Vietnamese-Americans who grew up in the United States and are anxious to learn about their heritage. This exhibit provides a forum for such an exploration to occur.

Unfortunately, SITES experienced some difficulty in booking the show. Thomas attributes the difficulty to museum directors across the country who are nervous about booking any show that may generate controversy; Vietnam is still a hot topic for many. Besides, there are only a handful of curators and museum directors who know anything about Vietnamese art, notes Thomas. Although this is changing. Before doi moi there were no private art galleries in Vietnam-- no one was going there to buy art so there was no market; suddenly it's been "discovered" and now hundreds of Vietnamese art galleries are springing up all over Asia, especially in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Fundraising was the most daunting obstacle facing the fledgling IAP. In 1988 there were virtually no foundations doling out money for Vietnamese projects, Thomas recalls. If it weren't for the donations from individuals and one large family foundation where IAP had contacts, IAP may have never sprouted from a grassroots organization to a mature non-profit corporation backed by major grants from prestigious sources such as the Ford Foundation, the Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Asian Cultural Council. Of course fundraising is still a challenge, he acknowledges, but at least IAP has a sturdy track record. This year IAP's budget is $100,000. Thomas quickly points out that's almost all project-specific money; in fact, Thomas donates nearly all of his free time to IAP. His day job is at Emmanuel College in Boston where he is a professor of art. Interestingly, Emmanuel College enrolled a large number of Vietnamese students during the war--thanks to the personal efforts of the current president, Sister Janet Eisner, who was director of admissions in the 1960s.

IAP's most ambitious project yet is the National Center for Folk Arts and Crafts. The $5 million center aims to preserve and showcase Vietnam's finest traditional arts and crafts produced by the fifty-four ethnic and tribal cultures living in Vietnam's urban centers, mountain villages and agrarian deltas; each group carries on the ancient tradition of making their own unique handicrafts, such as baskets and tapestries, decorative and ritual objects. The center will give audiences worldwide a chance to see these works in a centralized, formal setting. IAP envisions the center will eventually become a part of a burgeoning cultural/artistic hub in Hanoi; with the approval of Vietnamese officials, the center will be situated on prime real estate: a lakeside spot opposite the venerable eleventh century Temple of Literature (Van Mieu) near the National Museum of Fine Arts.

Thomas hopes the state-of-the-art center will set the standard for future museums in Vietnam. Modern galleries equipped with climate control will display historical and contemporary folk art; the center will also be a venue for live performances, educational films, lectures, seminars and a retail shop that will sell authentic Vietnamese handicrafts. IAP is in the midst of fundraising for the center and is working closely with the Vietnamese Fine Arts Association and the Crafts Cooperative Union of Vietnam. No completion date has been set, but Thomas anticipates it's at least a five-year endeavor.

This January, Hanoi will host Thomas's first solo art exhibition in Vietnam. The show consists of twenty-five mixed media portraits of Ho Chi Minh, who Thomas once feared and despised, and now considers to be one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century -- yet deeply misunderstood by Westerners. "Very few Americans know he was a cook in London, a dishwasher in Boston, a longshoreman in New York," he says. Thomas hopes to eventually mount his show in the United States in order to elucidate discussion as to who Ho Chi Minh really was. The "tragedy of the American war in Vietnam, could have been avoided," Thomas was quoted as saying several years ago, "if our leaders in the early sixties had only taken time to understand Ho's motivation."

Some consider Thomas foolhardy. Foolhardy or just a maverick, Thomas defied the trade embargo and successfully created a dialogue between the United States and Vietnam despite many constrictions including a lack of formal relations between the two countries, countless bureaucratic constraints, and numerous glitches. In recognition of his efforts, the Fine Arts Association of Vietnam nominated him for the Vietnamese Friendship Medal in 1994. "Dialogue is the foundation of our democratic system, it's the way you educate and change people," he says. Thomas hopes the images he selects to show under the auspices of IAP are healing, and help Americans move toward a new era of relations with the people of Vietnam.

What underlies Thomas's undiluted passion, dedication and persistence in his cultural work with Vietnam? "Guilt certainly has played a role," he says candidly. "Obviously if I had never been a soldier and if there had never been a war, then I probably would never have gone to Vietnam." "Guilt is an o.k. motivator," he says," but that only gets you so far. There's got to be a genuine affection for the people and their country."

Published on 2/1/96