The Dogma Collection (2000–present, Ho Chi Minh City) holds a large and unique archive of art and visual culture materials from the years before and immediately after Vietnam’s emergence as a unified nation in 1975. These include propaganda posters, paintings, combat art, photography, and stamps.
The 58th Carnegie International features a vivid selection of North Vietnam propaganda posters that, due to a scarcity of paper during the Vietnam War, were repurposed by artists and students practicing figure drawing. While the posters call for militant resistance against US forces in Vietnam and are designed to incite nationalist fervor, their reverse show war-weary figures rendered vulnerable, fragile, desired, and beautiful, against blank, indeterminate backgrounds. On one side, these works show bodies in service of state ideology, and on the other, bodies in formation and momentarily emancipated from imposed obligations. This concise, though striking, selection is drawn from over 300 examples from the Dogma Collection.
