An-My Lê: đô-mi-nô

An-My Lê: đô-mi-nô

24 June - 20 August 2021 |  Press Release + Checklist

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to present đô-mi-nô, a solo exhibition by An-My Lê, featuring selected works from her photographic series 29 Palms (2003-2004) and Viêt Nam (1994-1998), as well as a new collection of objects. Lê’s exhibition, her first in our New York space, recontextualizes two of her earlier series with the new presentation đô-mi-nô, 2021, and runs concurrently with the Robert Smithson show, Abstract Cartography. While Lê and Smithson are set apart by two decades, the works in these exhibitions respectively examine similar themes, including notions of landscape, historical legacies of the 1960s, and the infrastructural shifts of that period. 

The title of the exhibition, đô-mi-nô, alludes to the Cold War-era geopolitical concept of “domino theory.” Đô-mi-nô is the translation from French to a Vietnamese that is the modern national version that was romanized by European Jesuit priests in the 1600s.

Lê returned home to Vietnam in 1994 after then-US president Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations. From there, she began the series Viêt Nam (1994-1998). These photographs present agrarian landscapes and scenes of everyday life, often seen from an elevated perspective.  Conjuring an interest in scale and architecture, Lê’s panoramic views enable us to enter a landscape and to confront layers of history.  These works bridge back to sites of Lê’s childhood, as well as to those of her mother and grandmother, representing personal memory and culture lost through the schism and realities of war.  As Lê says, “My understanding of landscape changed when I went to Vietnam. …Instead of seeking the real I began making photographs that use the real to ground the imaginary.” 

With her 2003-2004 series, 29 Palms, the historical legacies of war suddenly took on new immediacy with the reality of the Iraq War. These black-and-white photographs were made in the California desert, where US Marines trained for battle prior to deployment. Taking up the mode of re-enactment first explored through her series Small Wars, here Lê’s photographs depict Marines on domestic soil acting out a theatre of conflict against “enemies” portrayed by fellow Marines. Taken near San Bernardino County, California, the desert landscape of these photographs bears resemblance to Afghanistan and Iraq – where Lê had applied but ultimately not realized her wish to embed as a journalist with the military.