FIONA MACLEOD

We are now up in the highlands of Vietnam. Today we visited an embroidery village in Dalat. The XQ artistic village. Having peeked at a hotel brochure about it I was highly sceptical : a tourist trap, I thought, I really didn’t come to Vietnam for this. But “go with the Sangha” is our moto (ie stick together) so our bus dropped us off at this “village” (more a huge complex) after our long day at two temples, with two teachings and a fantastic picnic lunch (apparently the seasoned travellors to Vietnam tell us we are getting de luxe meals made specially for us by the monastics and the lay friends of Vietnam who are so so happy that we are here with our teacher, Thay).

It took a long time to get our groups sorted out for visiting the place, and some of us got rather fed up (we are still so western ! ) but finally we had our young Vietnamese lady guide and she spoke impeccable English and we were lead through a beautiful wood carved door into a sino vietnamese style garden. This village was the genius of two artists who wanted to give both artisanal work a boost and allow visitors to see traditional Vietnamese craftsmanship.

We were looking at embroidered paintings. But you had to look twice to realise they were embroidered. At first they looked very kitschy to me : tigers and flowers and lakes. Being kitschy,  we realise as we go to so many pagodas with fiery eyed dragons surrounding Hollywoodian gigantic Bouddhas, is a very Vietnamese trait.

We were first shown the work in progress, from the initial drawing by a painter, to the tracing-paper copy, to the needle punched small holes onto the silk, to the background coloring and finally  to the young ladies making the minute stitches with silk threads.  We  peered over the young ladies’ shoulders and oohed and aawwed, and made tourist like comments while they continued to work as if quite alone in their own home. The gardens surrounding the small buildings they work in were fabulous : a sino-vietnamese layout, with rocks, rushing water, potted trees and bamboos, and small hump backed bridges.  

Slowly the paintings began to be more interesting to my eyes. First there was the technical achievement of embroidered paintings being seen on both sides (glass frames) and it was impossible to see the “back” of the work while the ends are tucked in between the front and the back, so once again invisible.

 We were shown how the ladies use their eyes to judge the front side of their embroidery and their fingers to judge the reverse side : “seeing with fingers”. (they study these techniques from a young age then they study here at 18 years old for one more year).

In fact slowly the artistic quality becomes more obvious : we were told repeatedly that this is not copy work, that the soul, the thinking and the emotions of the embroidery artist are all important : they have to choose colour schemes that go along with their understanding of the characters and places and to have mastered an incredible ability to translate light and shade into embroidery on a very fine scale.

 2 500 young ladies work in these villages (i think there are two more in Vietnam) but only 40 of them are capable of doing  portrait work.

One of the embroidered paintings that took my eye was a most Rembrandt like rendering of two old woman : one bending tenderly over the other, as this other old woman passed away. A silver crescent moon in its last phase looked on the scene. A poem was written under the embroidery so I asked one of our guides for a translation : ” the mother’s sacrifice is eternal. here are two old ladies taking care of each other. Their husbands have died on the battlefield.” The painting was titled “The life of the moon”

Another embroidery was called “the ancient town is calling your name” and I saw a young woman with long black hair holding a candle light up high … above the candle as if far away,  an old stupa,  and a river of roof tops, while under her feet there was one clump of green grass. She was searching, peering here and there, looking and listening, as if trying to find her way.

That was the first embroidery painting when I began to feel the artistic statement and the poetry  (”the call from a savage place” : wolf head, wolf howl,) and that they were both traditional craftsmanship and modern day questionings at the same time. Far removed from “folklore” and quaintness. All the “end of day” tiredness vanished as I felt  nourished by these embroideries. My criteria for any artistic endeavour : I am not the same person leaving the gallery, theater, museum, or wherever as I was coming in.