Ballarat Library
First Site Gallery
Thành Phẩm (2025)
🌏 Ballarat Library & First Site Gallery
For his debut solo show in Australia, Lê Nguyên Phương was invited to transform the public Ballarat City Library as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2025. In this occasion, his presence can be read as a counterpoint to an exhibition by the late French photojournalist Catherine Leroy—renowned as the only foreign woman photographer to cover the American War in Vietnam—staged concurrently at the Biennale. Lê also extended his exhibition to First Site Gallery in Melbourne’s CBD, where he dedicated the space to his ongoing body of work Vở ô ly. Presented across multiple venues, the exhibition attempted to reframe the brutalised imagery of Vietnamese bodies that has come to define the genre of “Vietnam War photography,” shifting the focus instead to receiving and retelling his family’s stories of survival in the war’s aftermath.
‘In 1985, Vietnamese artist Lê Nguyên Phương’s father travelled to Siem Reap as a professional volleyball player, part of an athletic training camp for the Vietnamese military. A year later, he returned not as an athlete but as a soldier. The battle he took part in was one of many during a little-known border conflict that followed the fall of the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese government never officially acknowledged this phase of the war and has refused to recognise its veterans. As a result, Lê’s father has remained outside both national history and public memory.
In 2024, Lê returned to Siem Reap with his father. They visited former battlegrounds, shared a
motel room, played volleyball and photographed one another. The exhibition Thành Phẩm contextualises Vietnamese artist Lê Nguyên Phương’s attempt to offer a counter-archive to the hegemonic western perspective of the American War in Southeast Asia. Drawing from photographs made with his father in Cambodia, archival photographs from his father’s album, and other works made with his family and queer community in Vietnam, Lê re-examines the emotional impact of the war and its aftermath on his loved ones, and the secrets buried within.’
For his debut solo show in Australia, Lê Nguyên Phương was invited to transform the public Ballarat City Library as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2025. In this occasion, his presence can be read as a counterpoint to an exhibition by the late French photojournalist Catherine Leroy—renowned as the only foreign woman photographer to cover the American War in Vietnam—staged concurrently at the Biennale. Lê also extended his exhibition to First Site Gallery in Melbourne’s CBD, where he dedicated the space to his ongoing body of work Vở ô ly. Presented across multiple venues, the exhibition attempted to reframe the brutalised imagery of Vietnamese bodies that has come to define the genre of “Vietnam War photography,” shifting the focus instead to receiving and retelling his family’s stories of survival in the war’s aftermath.
‘In 1985, Vietnamese artist Lê Nguyên Phương’s father travelled to Siem Reap as a professional volleyball player, part of an athletic training camp for the Vietnamese military. A year later, he returned not as an athlete but as a soldier. The battle he took part in was one of many during a little-known border conflict that followed the fall of the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese government never officially acknowledged this phase of the war and has refused to recognise its veterans. As a result, Lê’s father has remained outside both national history and public memory.
In 2024, Lê returned to Siem Reap with his father. They visited former battlegrounds, shared a
motel room, played volleyball and photographed one another. The exhibition Thành Phẩm contextualises Vietnamese artist Lê Nguyên Phương’s attempt to offer a counter-archive to the hegemonic western perspective of the American War in Southeast Asia. Drawing from photographs made with his father in Cambodia, archival photographs from his father’s album, and other works made with his family and queer community in Vietnam, Lê re-examines the emotional impact of the war and its aftermath on his loved ones, and the secrets buried within.’