Phi Phi Oanh has been working with Vietnamese lacquer painting (tranh son mài) for two decades. With a background in painting, she explores this historical technique, engaging its materiality and expanding its form. In 2004 Oanh was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study traditional tranh son mài in Hanoi, now a key medium in her practice and research. Drawing from the hybrid nature of her Vietnamese-American history, she reconfigures the culturally specific lacquer medium to create familiar yet distinctive, immersive yet intimate installations.

Formed from the sap of the versatile Rhus succedanea tree native to northern Vietnam, lacquer has an ancient history, used to cover utilitarian wooden objects and temple interiors for protection from termites and humidity. In the 1930s, Vietnamese lacquer was introduced as a painting medium at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine, established in Hanoi by the French colonial government, resulting in a hybrid between age-old craft techniques and Western art: the modern tranh son mài. Oanh is interested in expanding this process of acculturation by combining son mài (lacquer) with new materials and display methods to reflect on not only the medium itself but also cross-cultural histories. 

Oanh sees certain metaphors as inherent to the medium. In the same way that lacquering requires multiple applications of varnish on wood, as well as repeated sanding and polishing, memory is formed through an accumulative process, or as the artist puts it, a “sanding away of time and perception.” This focus on memory positions son ta (natural lacquer) as a cultural medium, witness, and marker of the changes in Vietnamese society.

A Light Exists in the Spring (2023) from the series Palimpsest (2013– ongoing) is an attempt at the total dematerialization of the medium, while highlighting the details of its “material qualities … the deep colors and ever-changing light.” The artist’s Lacquerscope machines, adapted from old slide projectors, render small, multicolored images on a large screen in a manner suggesting telescopic views. In display cases, miniature paintings and lacquer “skins” (tranh son mài on clear film) are rescaled through magnifying lenses, recalling microscopic images of infinitesimal worlds. This play between light, surface, scale, and perspective situates son ta between painting and photography, all within an innovative sculptural arrangement.