An-My Lê Between Two Rivers

At once quietly grand and pervasively eerie, An-My Lê’s photography and art explores scenes of conflict and political intrigue, both real and simulated

Through her photographs, videos, installations and embroidered works, An-My Lê considers the cycles of global history and conflict, the complexities of diaspora and the sensationalizing of warfare. Published to accompany the artist’s major survey at the Museum of Modern Art, An-My Lê Between Two Rivers is the first catalog to present Lê’s three-decade practice in different mediums, with seven photographic series presented alongside textiles, installations and newly rediscovered films. The two rivers in the title refer to the Mekong River in Vietnam and the Mississippi River in the southern United States, two important geographic locations that appear in the artist’s photography from her earliest to her most recent works. An essay by curator Roxana Marcoci examines the full sweep of Lê’s creative practice; essays by scholars La Frances Hui, Joan Kee, Thy Phu and Caitlin Ryan each focus on specific series; and two texts by writers Monique Truong and Ocean Vuong bring poetic sensibility to Lê’s singular perspective.
An-My Lê (born 1960) was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and came to the US in 1975 as a political refugee after the fall of Saigon. She studied at Stanford University before attending Yale School of Art, receiving her MFA in 1993. Her previous publications include Small Wars (2005) and Events Ashore (2014), and she is the recipient of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997) and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2012). Lê teaches at Bard College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.