“Sometimes I feel that I can no longer be honest, so I turn to the canvas.”
Born and raised in Saigon, he belongs to the generation of young contemporary painters emerging after Đổi Mới, choosing an independent path of practice. He sees painting as a way of recording his inner life. Diaries and daily reflections become his primary material because, as he says, “the human mind is never simple.”
Beyond painting, Việt is also a tattoo artist. Tattooing offers another creative joy, a way to connect with people and step out of the solitude of spending too many hours alone in a room painting. Alongside that is Hoàng Thị Café, “the House of Hoàng,” a space he created to share joy, contemplation, and friendship.
For Việt, painting is a form of confession. Negative emotions, the tremors of love, uncertainties that cannot be spoken aloud all are laid bare on the white toile. There, he paints himself, which is also a dialogue with himself, a process of self questioning.
The portraits in his works are often family members, friends, or guests who have visited Hoàng Thị Café. They appear as simplified forms, faces restrained to the point where only a state of being remains. Fragile yet resolute. They seem to have stepped out of memory or from an unfinished dream. These figures exist as emotional traces. They belong to his life, yet also touch something deeply hidden within the viewer.
The Conventions of a Love (2026)
At ANIMA, Hoang Nam Viet presents The Conventions of a Love, a series of ten works, together with one additional piece from another body of work, yet sharing the same inspiration drawn from the story of man and woman.
Throughout the series runs a dialogue between femininity and masculinity, between emotion and reason, unfolding along a linear progression of “agreements”: beginning with encounter and attraction, moving into passionate intoxication, then conflict and rupture, and concluding with an idealized pact, a bond that seems impossible to sever.
The image of the flower in this series is inspired by the flower in The Little Prince, intact in a cruel way and nothing more. Perhaps it is too ideal to guide second, third, or fourth agreements. Placed beside it is the snake, a symbol of temptation and knowledge. And knowledge, like a twin sister to the seed of sin, recalls the apple in the Garden of Eden in the Bible.
The flower’s small thorn, fragile yet fierce, confronts the snake’s sharp fangs, always poised to strike. The two subjects both oppose and wound each other, while at the same time remaining inseparable parts of one another.
Do not expect to encounter the Little Prince in this world, for paradise cannot sustain both suffering and ecstatic innocence at once. And perhaps happiness does not lie in the moment of meeting, but in the trembling anticipation of waiting.
Art as Part of the ANIMA Journey
Hoang Nam Viet’s works are currently displayed on the first floor of ANIMA, as part of the hotel’s art collection alongside artists Tuyp Tran, Bach Vu, Quoc Anh Le, Pham Xeen, Mzung Nguyen, Đang Quang Tien, and Le Phi Long. Together, they shape the distinctive spirit of ANIMA – a boutique art hotel in Saigon where contemporary Vietnamese art is not merely decoration, but a dialogue.
To step into ANIMA is also to step into the worlds of these artists – where personal stories, memories, and emotions are transformed into images and colors. In Hoang Nam Viet’s works, simplified portraits and fragile agreements between men and women, between reason and emotion, quietly unfold. His paintings do not simply hang on the walls; they gently invite each viewer into their own reflections.
At ANIMA, Hoang Nam Viet’s paintings are more than artworks on display – they become part of the journey every guest experiences. The figures within the paintings, along with the recurring symbols of flowers and serpents, seem to accompany you as you move through the hotel’s spaces, carrying stories of love and vulnerability.
📍 ANIMA – Vietnamese Contemporary Art Boutique Hotel
Discover Vietnamese contemporary art and let your Anima guide you.
