Searching and painting _{by Alessia Belsito-Riera}

Visiting New Zealand as father and grandfather, acclaimed Vietnamese artist Đặng Mậu Tựu used his time here alongside his family to quietly observe, reflect, and create a new body of work. Những Miền Đất Nhớ | Lands We Remember, which drenches Cuba Street’s Te Whare Manaaki o Toda in colour and life until the 7^th of February, continues Đặng’s exploration of memory, identity, and belonging while offering an intimate perspective on living between Vietnam and Aotearoa. Capturing moments of connection, unfamiliarity, and shared humanity through a Vietnamese artistic lens, the 30-plus artworks act as a cultural bridge while recounting a deeply personal story.

What draws you to painting and how would you describe your style?

I paint out of an inner need, with the aim of reflecting the life around me through emotion and thought. So I paint what I see through my own personal lens, and also things that seem almost invisible, like the movement and flow of everything around us.

I’m not satisfied with still, fixed objects. I’m always drawn toward ideas, toward breaking familiar structures. I paint when I feel like it. To me, everything can be beautiful if you go into its essence and try to live with it. Sometimes my paintings are figurative, but I don’t stop at what is commonly seen. That’s when the searching begins. At other times, the painting becomes an expression of something deeply personal. It is simply ‘what it is’, moving within my own world of colour and line.

I never feel satisfied enough to stop searching. That journey, up to now, is still continuing.

How do you bring two cultures together in your exhibition?

This exhibition came about through a kind of fate, starting with my trip to New Zealand to visit my son’s family. I was deeply moved by the beauty of the landscape and the friendliness and kindness of the people here, so I painted to capture those feelings. Viet Hub NZ knew about my work and wanted to organise an exhibition to introduce my paintings to the Vietnamese community as well as to art lovers in this beautiful country.

What is in my paintings? They reflect my thoughts and feelings about the landscapes and people here, and also about Vietnam. They are like visual notes made by a travelling artist. I noticed cultural similarities in the sculptural traditions of Māori and the peoples of the Pacific Islands.

I’ve travelled to many places and encountered things that feel both unfamiliar and familiar between these two lands – my homeland and Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud and strong winds, where people are gentle, value peace, and are full of humanity, and where animals, plants, and nature are treated with love.

What do you hope visitors take away from Những Miền Đất Nhớ | Lands We Remember?

A sense of connection. I don’t expect much, just that, even in a small way, viewers might find something in the paintings that brings them a little joy. That alone is enough to make me happy.