Duong Thu Huong, novelist

WHY HER ? « HER STRENGTH HAS ALWAYS INSPIRED ME AND, MOREOVER, SHE REMINDS ME OF MY MOTHER. »

Duong Thu Huong is a great novelist born in 1947 in Thái Bình, North Vietnam, whose literary career was launched in 1987 with Beyond Illusions (sold more than 100,000 copies). In this superb love novel, she developed the consequences on the people of the years of war and lies of the Vietnamese Communist Party. The following year, she reoffended with Blind Paradises (new literary success), which earned him eight months in prison by the North Vietnamese authorities. But she will never give up the struggle for democracy and freedom. You can lose everything," she writes, "even your life, but never your honor. »

By Thu-Van Tran

The artist Thu-Van Tran, born in 1979 in Ho Chi Minh City, draws on her experience as an exiled woman living in France to explore the question of physical and cultural displacement, particularly through episodes of colonial history. She believes in the importance of matter and in the power of highly symbolic color. The gray she uses in her works is a mixture of five colors that were found in the Rainbow Herbicides, these dioxins were released by the Americans during the war in Vietnam. The drums containing these toxic products were respectively marked with white, pink, blue, purple and orange.

CAUSE : EURASIA FOUNDATION, an association working in Vietnam for the social and economic integration of vulnerable people.