Vi Vu

The studio of Vi T. Vu ’10 is stacked with paintings. Vividly fluorescent animal and vegetal figures leap across dark backgrounds, multiplying in mirror images of each other. Look more closely, and strange themes begin to emerge: anthropomorphic shapes, images of violence and renewal, all come together in a series of intricately-articulated symbolic forms. All orders and variety are thrown together, but the composition is far from careless. Vu, has created her own, hard-to-catagorize, world.

What’s strange is that although the images are so surreal, they seem familiar, as though Vu has found a way to tap into the primordial subconscious of a fairytale. There is something sublime about the pain on the canvas, and the exquisite care with which each detail is executed.

In an effort to comprehend Vu’s brightly-colored paintings of animal and human figures, the observer—trained in our hyperactive descriptive culture of tweets, texts, and Facebook updates—might be tempted to latch onto a single word—hallucinogenic, or even psychedelic. Yet, trying to capture Vu in one word does a disservice to her artistic complexity. As Vu’s thesis advisor, Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) department professor Andrew Beattie, says of the “miracle worlds” she paints: “They’re not cute and she’s not cute—that’s the wrong word. When you use the words ‘whimsical’ and ‘quirky,’ it can lead to some kind of generic impression that’s not accurate.” Vu’s work has a substance and passion that goes far deeper than any immediate superficial reaction.

The art reflects the artist. In the estimation of those who know her, Vu is a deeply sincere, rooted, and kind individual. This unique individuality stands out in Harvard’s competitive culture of networking and self-promotion. Vu is neither averse to nor solely motivated by exhibiting her work. Beattie commends this quality, noting that it speaks to Vu’s intense, personal engagement with her art. “[Vi is] not terribly moved by exhibition. She’s looking for a certain kind of standard… a more personal pursuit of something truly good.” Vu, Beattie says, is not looking for approbation from a larger community, but rather a sense of personal self-satisfaction, a more introspective and, perhaps, more genuine motivation.

Vu’s progression towards becoming an artist was in some ways unexpected. Though she says she has always had a passion for art, in her first year and a half at Harvard she focused on Molecular and Chemical Biology, taking only one VES class each semester. Her interest in medicine came from spending time with her father when he was hospitalized with cancer. She was accepted to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute internship program, which she participated in for three years before focusing wholly on her art in her senior year. Though she now has a secondary in Neurobiology, her engagement with her art has increased in intensity over the past two years, culminating in her work for her senior thesis.

As is evident from the introspective nature of her paintings, Vu’s relationship with art is an intense expression of deeply felt, personal emotion. As she says, “A painting is everything in your world, deposited in that work: everything you think, believe, and know. Or don’t know.” Yet Vu’s work is not inaccessible. Instead, it almost teases the viewer, speaking on many different levels. Vu describes her own work best: “I suppose I don’t make conversation, but whisper secrets to myself.”

—Staff writer Catherine A. Morris can be reached at morris6@fas.harvard.edu.