HCM CITY — Sài Gòn based artist Khoa Lê will introduce her solo exhibition Cổ Tích Xám (Happy Never After) from June 24 to July 17 in Hồ Chí Minh City.

The exhibition will be held at Craig Thomas Gallery, 27I Trần Nhật Duật Street, in Tân Định District.

Khoa Lê is a talented young visual artist, illustrator, comic artist and children’s writer. Her unusual imagination and versatile skill are fully expressed in the amazing creations of Happy Never After. With her impressive ability, Lê has combined different kinds of material to bring out original work, in which each of her paintings is a story by itself in the world of fairy tale.

Inspired by everything she encounters in life, Khoa said two of her favourite fairy tales are The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen and Cinderella. “It has a lot to do with my personality. I see myself a dark person, deep down inside. I believe you have to have a way to release what you suppress. Because I am an illustrator for children’s books, I need to be merry and colourful. I enjoy it but I also have an inner self that is expressed through my personal artwork.”

Khoa also stressed that the reason for the majority of her female protagonists being portrayed as damsels in distress rather than heroines was because “They are struggling and fighting for their lives, all by themselves. It is not like they are waiting for someone to save them. But I am definitely not a feminazi. I do not go all the way there. I like it when a man pays for the date. I am very feminine in this way, but I am not looking for a shoulder to cry on all the time.” — VNS