Lê Hiền Minh

Five Questions is an ongoing series of interactive works that pair sculpture and text. In it, Minh asks a set of five simple questions about women: Who is woman? What is woman? Where is woman? When is woman? Why is woman? "Writing - in the form of questions - is a way for Hiền Minh to avoid manipulating the viewer’s reading, understanding and perception of the work. Instead of forcing ideas, questions help to expand the thought process." People are invited to interact with the work by writing their answers to these questions and placing them within or upon the sculpture. "In order to ‘extend’ sculpture (from a fixed, finished mass, to a more continuous process), writing - especially in the form of questions - helps to create a power- neutral space. There, Hiền Minh hands the power (to create) to the audience. As long as the questions continue to provoke them, and they continue to interact by providing answers, the work will change shape and live on." The first in the series was The States of Mind (2019) which contains five large female statues in five different poses, and was installed at a historical site and a Buddhist temple named Myorakuji in Fukuoka, Japan. The second in the series was The Invisibility of Female Labour (2020), and was shown at the Spinnerei in Leipzig, Germany in which she focused on the subject of female labour and the inequality system between male and female workers. The third and most recent in this series is The Gods of Expectation: Divine Cycle, Devine Constant, Devine Source no.1 (2021). With this installation, Minh used "magnificent figures of goddesses from multiple indigenous beliefs" such as Đạo Mẫu, a folk religion believed to have originated from matriarchy of ancient Vietnam, to amalgamate with home appliances are "provoking, while also acknowledging, the strength of women in their seeming invisibility" and "challenges our collective understanding of monumentality and femininity, whilst persistently criticizing the social/gender hierarchy deeply embedded in all aspects of life – both traditional and contemporary – in Vietnam".

Lê Hiền Minh created an artist book Còn Lại|Rời Rạc in 2012 as a companion piece to the installation Dictionaries. It was acquired by the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection which is one of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's special collections for public viewing in the "study room on the fifth floor of the School's Sharp Building". The book was also collected by Asia Art Archive to "preserve and make information on contemporary art from and of Asia easily accessible in order to facilitate understanding, research and writing in the field."

Lê Hiền Minh has been using Vietnamese traditional handmade paper called Dó as her primary art-making material for two decades. Dó paper is made from the bark of the Dó tree and is used to make woodcut folk prints called Đông Hồ. This type of folk print has existed since the 11th century during the reign of the Lý Dynasty. She uses this paper to create large-scale sculptural installations, a departure from the traditional use of Dó paper in Vietnamese art. Minh describes her intention "As the Dó paper tradition becomes a relic, I am exploring ways to reinvent it as a contemporary art making material. It is my hope that the use of Dó paper in my artwork will contribute to cultural sustainability." In a speech at the Factory Contemporary Arts Center, she divided her career into two periods: in the early period, her work drew from her inner life and focused on her personal history, while in recent years, the subjects of her work address broader aspects of society and culture including topics related to politics, religion and history.

Lê Hiền Minh (born 1979) is a Vietnamese artist known for employing a Vietnamese traditional handmade paper called Dó to construct large-scale installations. Her work acts as a bridge between contemporary and traditional Vietnamese art and also between modern and historical Vietnamese culture. She currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.

Lê Hiền Minh was born in Hanoi, North Vietnam in 1979. In 1998, she studied traditional lacquer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts. Upon graduating, she moved to America to attend the Art Academy of Cincinnati and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004.