Thuy Tien Pham Thi

The kitchen of the Nung people

2019

Medium

Vietnamese Lacquer

Dimensions

70x90 cm

Department

Drawing and Painting

Vietnam Fine Arts University has an internship program during the school year to record actual documents so I went to the mountainous area of ​​Lang Son, Vietnam, where the Nung ethnic group lives. I sketched this picture after visiting the villages where the people were very gentle and kind, and their kitchen scene is also very beautiful. I painted on a rainy afternoon, next to a smoldering kettle creating white smoke.

I went there during the summer months, when they had just harvested the rice and started planting corn. Every day, my friends and I drew landscapes, human activities and culture. We walked every day to draw, passing through rice fields, corn fields, participating in religious activities and sacrifices of the Nung people. The people there helped us a lot for the successful internship, inviting us to eat and drink constantly…

I went to Mrs. Sung's house, a family on the mountainside. Mrs. Sung took me to herd cows. I grew up in the city and of course herding was quite strange to me. I sat in a shack up the hill and drew a mortar around or a cow tied next to it. Their family often invites me to eat and we were given a lot of corn to eat. When it rains, Mr. Sung taught me to break a leaf to cover the rain instead of an umbrella, an experience never to be forgotten.

I used Vietnamese Lacquer. Lacquer is an ancient art form that has appeared for a long time in Asian regions. The establishment of the Indochina Fine Arts College in Viet Nam (1924) has brought lacquer from a handicraft item to painting, creating Vietnam's own Lacquer painting line and completely different from Japanese Lacquer. I chose it because it is a material associated with the cultural development history of the nation, it is really attractive when drawing pictures.

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