Việt Lê is a queer, disabled academic, artist, writer, and curator whose work over the past two decades centers on sexualities and spiritualities with a focus on Southeast Asia and its diasporas, as well as intersectional, cross-ethnic coalitions. Dr. Lê is the author of Return Engagements (Duke University Press, 2021), which received the 2023 Association of Asian American Studies’ Outstanding Achievement book award for Media, Performance, and Visual Studies. The art book White Gaze is a collaboration with artist | theorist Latipa (2nd edition, Candor Arts + Memory and Resistance Laboratory + Sming Sming Books). A 2022-24 Headlands Bay Area Arts Fellow and ‘22 Stanford CCSRE Mellon Arts Fellow, he has also received fellowships from the Teiger Foundation, Fulbright-Hays (Việt Nam), Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Italy), Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France).
Lê has presented their work at Bangkok Art & Cultural Center, Rio Gay Film Festival, Shanghai Biennale, the Barbican, among other venues. Lê curated Charlie Don’t Surf!, Centre A, Vancouver, 2005; trấnsmutation, / (Slash), San Francisco, 2023; and cocurated transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix (with Yong Soon Min: ARKO, Seoul; Galerie Quynh, Sài Gòn; UC Irvine Gallery; YBCA, SF, 2008-09) and the 2012 Kuandu Biennale (Taipei). A board member of Art Matters, Lê has taught at UC Irvine, University of Southern California, Stanford, and Ca' Foscari University of Venice.
Image courtesy Headlands Center for the Arts | photo: Aaron Womack 2023