Reed’s expansive text includes some commentary on Japan and Polynesia, but offers no accounts from Southeast Asia. His dissection of geographical and historical contexts bolsters his theories on the meaning and relevance of the selected artworks. In one of the few books that overview the intersection of both topics, Art and Homosexuality, Reed (2011) examines a broad span of artworks and artists from around the world, sometimes going back millennia, to discuss the changing nature of ideas about homosexuality and its acceptance in the various societies he researches. This article is published as part of a thematic collection on gender studies.Īlthough in Sliwinska’s opinion “queer culture is entwined with art and visual culture”, research on queer art Footnote 1 is still scarce ( Sliwinska, 2013: 809). The narrative attends specifically to the dissidence, in content or format, of selected artworks, and points to a correlation over time to an increased tolerance of homosexuality. Photography, another medium not long or firmly established, is also extensively employed. Frequently they have performative characteristics, an art form that arose in Vietnam in the 1990s, the beginning of the timeframe explored here. Many of these artworks are not made in traditional media, or they break conventions in the local artistic canon.
This article explores some of the first manifestations of queer art in contemporary Vietnam, outlining a short history of artworks that may be considered “queer” because of their subject matter, irrespective of whether they were made by straight or queer identified artists. Male and female artists in Vietnam from the early 1990s to the new millennium have contributed art that gives visibility to non-normative lifestyles that go against the traditional values espoused by national rhetoric.