» Rise

Rise is a performance work – a ritual of liberation – by Lai Dieu Ha, first presented at the International Performance Art Festival IN:ACT 2010 in Hanoi. The piece unfolds like a confession told through the body, continuing a series of deeply personal works in which Dieu Ha wrestles with the layers and burdens that have shaped her for years. 

In a quiet space, a rectangular blue fur rug is laid out on the floor. Stepping onto it, Dieu Ha slowly removes her clothing, layer by layer, until she reveals the padded undergarments she has worn for a decade – objects that dictated how others saw her, and how she came to see herself. Each act of removal is paired with murmured words – farewells and reproaches – tearing through the haunting weight of her own image: “I’m saying goodbye to you, because you’ve made me suffer for ten years already…” 

When she stands with her body completely bare – what the artist calls “the last and most important thing left” – Dieu Ha brushes glue across her skin, lies down, and invites the audience to cover her body with the blue fur. The moment of nudity – raw, primal, and vulnerable – lasts only an instant before it is hidden, as though the act both exposes and shields, revealing and protecting her intimacy at once. 

The work ends with a gesture of release: holding a small white-eye bird in her hands, Dieu Ha whispers an apology for having caused it distress. She places the bird in her mouth, then opens it, letting it fly away. Its trembling yet determined flight becomes a metaphor for the brief, decisive moment of escape from fate. 

Within Dieu Ha’s practice, Rise acts as a rite of farewell – a shedding of material disguises and of the cultural expectations about age, the body, and beauty that had long defined her. From this point onward, the body becomes the site of a new journey, where pain, vulnerability, and the possibility of healing are explored with even greater intensity in the works that follow.