‘Pioneer’ elderly gets solo exhibit

Mong Bich will finally show her life's work after decades of being overlooked

Hanoi: Aged almost 90, Vietnamese artist Mong Bich picks a spot on the tiled floor of her favourite room, checks the light and sits down to paint.

A “pioneer” who has inspired generations of women artists in Vietnam, Bich has won plaudits overseas and she has a watercolour in the British Museum’s collection.

But for years she has been overlooked in her home country — and has had to wait until this month for her first solo exhibition.

“Painting is like eating rice for me — I have to eat rice and I have to paint,” said Bich told AFP at her home on the outskirts of Hanoi, where she still works for up to eight hours a day.

At first, she had hesitated over holding a solo show, but her children encouraged it.”I do not want to sell my work so I did not see the point. My paintings are my memories,” she said ahead of this month’s opening in the capital.

Specialising in silk paintings of daily life and ordinary people — women in particular — Bich ploughed a lonely furrow during years of war against the United States, when artists were steered towards drawing soldiers or frontline workers.

“Portraits of individuals were not appreciated at that time, but they were Mong Bich’s forte,” said Phan Cam Thuong, an eminent art critic and researcher.

Needing to earn a living, in 1956 Bich enrolled in one of the first classes of the newly opened Vietnam College of Art in Hanoi and took a job drawing propaganda cartoons for a newspaper.

“In many ways, her story is Vietnam’s story. She did not have an easy life,” said Thierry Vergon, director of L’Espace, the French cultural centre that hosted the Hanoi exhibition.