2. "Searching Real Face"

Nguyễn Khắc Chính, Searching Real Face, Oil on Canvas, 49.21” x 83.08”. 2011

Nuyen, Khac Chinh is a contemporary Vietnamese artist. He was born in 1984 in Hanoi, Vietnam, and graduated in 2006 from HanoiUniversity of Fine Arts.

Nguyen's painting depicts a young woman in a long yellow dress, wearing a mask on her face and holding a mask in her hand. Under her feet lie several masks. Chinh says the real is mixed with the false, as it is in contemporary life. "Searching for real face" is a self-portrait painting that is painted according to a realistic style combined with surrealist style. The content of the painting expresses the inner exploration of looking for the real nature or of true worth. Social life seems like a big play and everybody seems like an actor inside it. They live with many different faces. They often change their nature to suit goals or benefits that they have formulated. To achieve these goals, they sometimes have to lose themselves and when looking back, they can't recognize who they are. To retrieve oneself is a difficult exploration.

Besides depicting contemporary issue, the painting also related to Vietnamese society in 1900’s since in the painting, the figure wears 1900’s clothes. In this time period, society had many traditional perspectives on women. They expected many “faces” from a woman, leaving them no choice about who they were. Through the painting, we can learn more about Vietnamese society in 20^th century.