Biography

Việt Lê is an academic, artist, writer, and curator whose work centers on spiritualities, trauma, representation, and sexualities with a focus on Southeast Asia and its diasporas. Dr. Lê, Associate professor at California College of the Arts, is the author of Return Engagements: Contemporary Art’s Traumas of Modernity and History in Sài Gòn and Phnom Penh (Duke University Press, 2021). The art book White Gaze is a collaboration with Latipa (Sming Sming Books, 2019, second edition) is in the collections of the Guggenheim, Victoria and Albert Museum, SF MOMA, among others.

Lê has presented his work at The Banff Centre, Bangkok Art & Cultural Center, Shanghai Biennale, Rio Gay Film Festival, and the Smithsonian, among other venues. Lê curated Charlie Don’t Surf! (Centre A, Vancouver, BC, 2005); and co-curated humor us (Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, CA, 2008), transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix (with Yong Soon Min: ARKO, Seoul; Galerie Quynh, Sài Gòn; UC Irvine Gallery; YBCA, San Francisco, 2008-09) and the 2012 Kuandu Biennale (Taipei) and the 2022 Viet Film Fest, “the world’s largest Vietnamese international film festival,” with a special screening and Q&A with Trinh T. Minh-ha. A board member of the Queer Cultural Center and Art Matters, Lê is 2022 Stanford Center for Comparative Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) Mellon Arts Fellow, a ’22-24 Headlands Bay Area Fellow, and is a Visiting Scholar at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. vietle.net