Việt Lê
SEA sạ Foundation

Việt Lê’s @_vietle creative and critical practice as a queer, disabled artist focuses on sexualities, spiritualities–the physical and the metaphysical. Their hybrid projects encompass experimental film, ritual performance, pain-tings, power objects/ installations and text towards a healing.  Expanding definitions of “trans,” “trance,” and “medium,” their work explores various corporeal aspects–sight, sound, touch, smell, taste–as modalities of embodied knowing. Focused on global south indigenous shamanisms and knowledge traditions, Lê’s non-profit foundation seeks to share resources and wisdom among artists, healers, researchers and healers. Rooted in Southeast Asian cosmologies, Lê continues their training and practice as a Vietnamese indigenous shaman-monk through various mediums. 

 Dr. Việt Lê is the author of Return Engagements (Duke University Press, 2021, which received the 2023 Outstanding Book Award in Media and Visual Culture  from the Association of Asian American Studies), and collaborated with Latipa on the art book White Gaze (Sming Sming Books | Candor Art, 2019), which is in the collection of museums internationally including the Guggenheim, Victoria and Albert Museum, SF MOMA, and in over 200 libraries. Việt Lê is Professor Emeritus at California College of the Arts (former Chair, Visual & Critical Studies graduate program). They are a 2022-24 Headlands Bay Area Fellow and ‘22 Stanford CCSRE Mellon Arts Fellow. Lê has presented their work at The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; DoBaeBacSa Gallery, Seoul, Korea; Japan Foundation, Việt Nam; 1a Space, Hong Kong; Bangkok Art & Cultural Center (BACC), Thailand; Civitella Ranieri, Italy; Shanghai Biennale, China; Rio Gay Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; among other venues.

Awards: Lê has received fellowships from Fulbright-Hays (Việt Nam), William Joiner Center, Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Italy), Fine Arts Work Center (USA), Center for Khmer Studies (Cambodia), Art Matters Foundation, International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden University, the Netherlands), Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), Teiger Foundation, and PEN Center USA, among others.  He received the inaugural Prudential Eye Prize for Best Writing on Asian Contemporary Art (2015).

Lê curated Miss Saigon with the Wind (Highways, Santa Monica, 2005) and Charlie Don’t Surf!(Centre A, Vancouver, BC, 2005); and co-curated humor us (with Leta Ming and Yong Soon Min; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, LA, CA, 2008), transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix (with Yong Soon Min; Seoul, Sài Gòn, Irvine, San Francisco, 2008-09), the 2012 Taipei Kuandu Biennale and Love in the Time of War (UC Santa Barbara and SF Camerawork).He coorganized the 2015Artistic Interventions confererence (Ph.D. workshops and symposium) in Hong Kong. Lê's projects have been featured in Newsweek Asia; The Korea Herald, The Toronto Star, Huffington Post, China Daily, Orange County Register, Bangkok Post, and The Cambodia Daily.

Dr. Lê received their M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine, where he has also taught Studio Art and Visual Culture courses. Lê received their M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (Department of American Studies & Ethnicity). In Taipei,  Lê was a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica. Lê is a former board member of Art Matters (New York), Queer Culture Center SF, VAALA, editorial board member Art Journal, ADVA, Journal of Vietnamese Studies (JVS), and one of the original co-founders of DVAN. 

Now retired from academia, for twenty four years, including twelve years at CCA, they have taught at the University of California, Irvine; Università Ca' Foscari Venezia;  University of Southern California; Irvine Valley Community College, Stanford and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Their writing has been translated into Chinese, German, Khmer, and Vietnamese.