Hà Ninh Pham (b. 1991) is an artist from Hanoi, Vietnam. His work explores how we build up our understanding of territories from afar. Hà Ninh Pham earned his MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2018 and his BFA from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts in 2014. His work has been featured on Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, and ArtandMarket. Notable artists’ residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Corporation of Yaddo in the United States, Cité
Internationale des Arts in Paris, France, PLOP London in the United Kingdom and the ASEAN Artists Residency Programme in Jakarta, Indonesia. Solo shows include Cheat Codes, curated by Passenger Pigeon Press at FRONT Art Space, New York (2019), Institute of Distance, curated by Michael Lee at S.E.A Focus, Singapore (2021), Recursive Fables, curated by Vân Do at A+ Works of Art in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2022), and Fugitive Zone, curated by Lê Thien-Bao at Gallerie BAQ, Paris (2024). Represented by
Joshua Lim at A+ Works of Art, Hà Ninh Pham is also an Associate Lecturer of the School of Communication and Design at RMIT University Vietnam and a curatorial board member at Á Space Experimental Arts in Hanoi.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

My artistic journey began without a particular moment when I decided that art would be my destiny.

I was born in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1991. My father came from a peasant family in the countryside, while my mother came from a working-class family. They married in 1979, before Đổi Mới, and both worked for the state. My father later studied in Russia and, after returning to Vietnam, became a manager in the state sector. This gave our family sufficient stability for my parents to invest in their children’s abilities.

They were the first generation in our extended family able to do so. Fine art was unfamiliar within our social environment at the time. Nobody in my extended family knew a painter or had attended an art exhibition.

When I was three or four, I drew frequently, including on walls and tables. Many children behave this way, so there was nothing exceptional about it. My parents nevertheless treated it as an ability that should be developed strategically. I began formal drawing classes at the age of ten. This was the practical beginning of my artistic journey.

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

In the earlier stages of my journey, I was fortunate to be surrounded by people who supported me tremendously. This helped sustain my interest. However, the more professional I become, the more I see inspiration and motivation as operational issues that require structural treatment.

I find it useful to identify some worthy “opponents.” I have a few, and I keep them primarily as sources of motivation. A movement you feel compelled to resist, a person you do not want to become, an idea you disagree with, or a discourse in which you refuse to participate can all provide artistic motivation. This is something I learned outside art school, although art history offers many examples of it.

To continue making work is also to deal with a particular curse: as an artist, you cannot continue producing something that already bores you. It is therefore necessary to treat your practice as a high priority. This means managing your health, energy, and time carefully, associating with the right people, and surrounding yourself with things that stimulate you. It also means occasionally saying no to things that are entirely normal for most people but function as obstacles to your practice.

How has your artistic style evolved over time?

I began my practice in 2017, while living in the United States. It started as a map-making practice, in which I drew maps of an imagined land. These maps were positioned within a grid-based system, and the overall style was clean and structured. At the time, I wanted to make work that functioned as conceptual art while retaining the aesthetic presence of a painting. This approach worked for a while.

After I returned to Vietnam, around the time of Covid, the practice began to transform. Once I had produced enough maps, I could imagine the land as a self-sustained world that could be depicted from different perspectives, rather than only through the top-down view of cartography. I began experimenting with objects, installations, games, and sculptures. These mediums complicated the visual language of the practice and gave me a larger conceptual space in which to work.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being creative, in my experience, is the ability to navigate the world. We live in an era in which things are changing very quickly, particularly in terms of technology and connectivity. Most people will increasingly be forced to consider their identity, what makes them who they are, and their traditions, what makes their people a people, in relation to this rapidly changing world.

This process requires a considerable capacity to create. Creativity allows people to reorganize their understanding of themselves and construct new relationships with changing conditions. Those who cannot reinvent their world will feel the pressure of being left behind.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?

Each artist has their own set of challenges. Mine are particularly related to the city Hanoi and country Vietnam I am based in currently. There is not a lot of functional art infrastructure here, and the art community here is small, in which I feel loved and cared about, but sometimes not as an artist but as a friend or a family member. I am grateful for such emotional support, but at the same time I feel the need to be part of something more diverse and bigger, because there will be a place for me there. I have been constantly showing my work oversea since my return to Vietnam in 2019 and have some exposure. But I have not successfully been able to build a global community yet. This is the next step. 

What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to establish themselves?

You need to understand your job very well. Being an artist today is a complex occupation. I spend roughly 50% of my time and energy making art, 30% running my studio as a one-person business, and 20% negotiating politically to position my practice in relation to the right discourses. Some artists will spend more or less time on each part, but this is more or less the job description.

This does not mean that every artist must become a businessperson or a politician. You can refuse to participate in the market or in institutions, as long as that refusal is a strategy rather than an accident. Different decisions are optimal for different kinds of success and, therefore, for different kinds of artists. The important thing is to understand what your decisions are designed to achieve.

Text & photo courtesy of Hà Ninh Pham

Website: https://haninh.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haninhpham/