The Artist

1960 Thizy France

Born in France, for her graduate work, Kristine McCarroll studied in Australia. The artist first traveled to Vietnam in 1995 and was compelled to come back in 2005 with her artist husband, Geoff Levitus, her former art teacher in Australia. The two artists quickly immersed themselves in the everyday life of Vietnam, absorbing inspiration from their daily bicycle rides through the small twisted alleyways of Hanoi’s old quarter.
Kristine’s first exhibition in Hanoi was in 2007 at the Art Vietnam Gallery, The Good Ole Times in the Colonies. The artist says, “The theme of my work is the French colonization of Vietnam which seen from the point of view of the Vietnamese, was mostly a miserable time. And as a French-born artist living abroad in Australia I felt it is only fair to tell the truth from the point of view of the oppressed and repressed people of the country during the colonization.” This body of work was started during her last year of study in Australia to “extrapolate the theme of changing and evolving identity and memory on the level of a country and reflect on the collective memory.” Using postcard images dating from French colonial Indochina as inspiration, the artist created 17 large mixed media pieces combining digital print technology and oil glazing techniques. By painting overlay on the original postcards, the artist created a satirical and ironic body of work portraying how the Vietnamese were dehumanized by the French.

In 2011, Kristine and Geoff, her husband artist were artists-in-residence at the New Space Art Foundation in Hue, Vietnam and in 2013 they worked with five young artists on a collaborative installation project titled Juxtapositions at DocLab in Hanoi. The artist continues to come back and forth to Vietnam exhibiting and gathering inspiration for new work. She has exhibited widely in Australia, and now maintains an exhibition and artist in residency program in southern France.

Kristine McCarroll graduated in 1981 with an MBA from the Ecole De management de Lyon (EM Lyon), France and then an Advanced Diploma of Fine Arts, TAFE, Meadowbank, NSW Australia in 2003. In 1989 she immigrated to Australia and now divides her time between France and Australia.

Uncle Ho’s French Memories 2007
The artist uses the eponymous postcard image of Uncle Ho drafting the Declaration of Independence in the garden of his simple house on stilts in Hanoi. The artist paints an overlay of his formal suit in the fashion of the Vietnamese flag and puts a pack of French Gauloise cigarettes below the table at his feet. Humor and irony, reverence and disrespect, the contradiction of the times.