Sophie's Art Tour
“Where your passions and the needs of the world meet, there lies your vocation.”
When a British woman falls in love with a country with such rich history and art, she creates a unique journey where visitors learn Vietnam’s story through the eyes of its artists from pre colonial era to present. For any visitor visiting Vietnam, this is a tour you can’t miss!
A journey through Vietnamese art and its history, this is what the heart of Sophie's Art Tour is all about. Back in 2012 I visited HCMC and through online research stumbled across Sophie's Art Tour and decided to book our tour not having any expectations. Little did I know that I would be immersed in so much knowledge, history, and visual stimulation in the 4 hour tour that is so intimately curated for guests to experience.
You literally get to walk through four significant stages of Vietnamese history in relation to its art scene and view its history through the eyes of artists. From the French colonial influence, Indochinese and Vietnam American war, northern and southern art to contemporary art. Now, fast forward to 2018 when we returned to Vietnam and visited Hanoi we discovered that Sophie had expanded her art tour experience to the north of the country! We absolutely love what Sophie Hughes and her team have created with this unique art tour experience that we wanted to share with you more about Sophie, why she chose Vietnam, how her passion turned into a business that happens to fill a big void in the tourism industry in Vietnam and what is next in store for her post covid!
Sophie Hughes grew up in the UK having always loved art and people! She was always fascinated by different cultures, and how people express themselves. While in college, she decided to major in religious movements at University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Studying religion “is a great way to understand human needs and motivations” says Hughes. Post university and pre Vietnam, Sophie spent her earlier career involved with development art projects in the UK. She managed programs where diasporic art and music were utilised in projects that engaged vulnerable groups such as refugees and youth offenders, by using art as a universal language to unite communities, the projects aimed to combat racism . In 2008, when the financial crisis hit it closed that chapter for Sophie when much of the funding for these projects was pulled and on a whim she decided to take a vacation to Vietnam and never looked back!
Upon her arrival in HCMC (formerly Saigon), visiting the Fine Arts Museum made a strong impression on Sophie. Whenever, “I visit a country I find it interesting to go to art galleries and museums, to me it’s a unique perspective to see the country, you view the country's history through the artists and their work of art”. With its historical landmark, distinct architecture, rich stories behind every artwork displayed, Sophie felt that there was an opportunity to tell the story of Vietnamese history through it’s art. Vietnam in the early 2000s was opening up and bustling with many foreigners arriving to start their businesses. Sophie was part of that second wave of freelancers and global nomads that arrived in the country.
Being in Vietnam, every day was a new adventure, Sophie spent her days teaching English, dabbling in different projects to support herself, later on managing Galerie Quynh (one of the first foreign contemporary galleries in HCMC) while immersing in the art scene by attending exhibitions, meeting artists during her free time, because to her, “art is an interesting in road to understanding the country you are in”. Sophie reminisces the days where artists would invite her to their homes to eat around the kitchen table with their parents and grandparents, amidst the conversations she would learn that she was eating with three generations of artists while they all shared their various experiences! The “entire recent history of Vietnam had been experienced and expressed through these artists' work”. Those conversations, meals, and exhibitions were what led Sophie to her eureka moment to create Sophie’s Art Tour.
In 2011, Sophie started her art tour with the mission of letting foreigners who arrive in Vietnam a way to understand as much as they could in 4 hours. Vietnam has a complex history so she spent a lot of time researching, reading, creating large collages on her wall to document her discoveries, and speaking to experts in the field who became her mentors including Boi Tran Huynh Beattie, Nora Taylor, and Tim Doling. As months moved on, all the moving pieces that she was exposed to started to align, the stories she would hear from artists would connect with the history she was reading. Out of curiosity, she asked how did the big political incidents in its history condense down to the personal lives of these artists and community. To provide a comprehensive understanding of this was how she decided to shape the tours that is quintessentially Sophie’s Art Tour.
As a foreigner living in a foreign country there are many obstacles one faces when choosing to let this new place be your home. Sophie admits that of course there were challenges during this last decade of making a life and creating a business in Vietnam but she also feels very fortunate. She explains it, where your passions and the needs of the world meet, there lies your vocation. With a low overhead to start the tours and no marketing fee spent with just word of mouth referrals, and the demand for a more thorough history tour mixed with art Sophie was able to grow her tours organically and more so when Vietnam celebrated its 40th anniversary since Saigon’s liberation back in 2015 and foreign journalists arrived in Vietnam they were keen to find experiences that reflected on the past as well as engaged with today's Vietnam which the art tour provided
But when asked what some of her challenges had been a few moments stood out. One was when she broke down in tears when she tried to do a trial tour. The thought of speaking in front of strangers for 4 hours straight about a country's history and its art scene was daunting. Another has been trying to piece the jigzaw puzzle together when she is on a tour. In Vietnam “the spaces, sometimes they shut, the artwork won’t be there in the museum or something is just not working that day, it can be stressful to handle the Vietnam chaos when you are trying to manage your tour group”. You learn to overcome these hiccups and bring some humor to your tour by showing your visitors this is life in Vietnam, you go with the flow! However, the biggest challenge that she faces for her job is the interviews she conducts with older artists. As a young foreign woman talking to men in their 80s a very Confucian society was incredibly difficult at times, some were open to sharing and others not as much. They have had an incredibly traumatic experience in their life and it is important to understand the sensitivity and the way Vietnam is structured.
Sophie’s Art Tour is celebrating its 10 year anniversary having given tours to over 10,000 visitors since it started. What began as one tour in HCMC has now expanded to two tours in Vietnam, free tours for artists, and groups from children’s charities, and a must participate tour for both local, and international tour groups. Even with Covid19 affecting tourism all over the world, forcing Sophie’s tour to stop in February she has been able to take this time to work on revamping her website, organising her digital archives of artists interviews, photos and artworks, , working on her graphic novel (keep an eye out) and other projects and share with us her mission in this next decade, and her big mission in life!
Art history in Sophie’s opinion has “missed a trick in general, it is so separate it's so fascinating to those of us who care about but not so much to the general public. It is such a fascinating way to learn about history. We really found that with the tour, first for art lovers, but then we started taking people from different backgrounds on the tour”. There is so much possibility to bring history alive when you try to connect the past with now through art. Art is a great way to see the world, it gets filtered and the work that is produced is a key indicator of the political, the social landscape of a country. Sophie’s dream is to be able to replicate her business model in order to allow other developing countries and museums to create a similar tour experience to both art lovers and visitors to any country they are in. Through this she hopes to also create a worldwide art network in which contemporary art can be funded through various projects so that we can continue to nurture the art scene because they hold an important key to our societies past, present, and future.
Vietnam’s art scene has matured over the last decade since Sophie arrived. Art galleries were predominantly run by foreigners but many are now run by young Vietnamese. Curators come together to put on exhibitions and critics write about them, there is a stronger ecosystem today than before. Artists are looking at history and are including it back in their artwork, history that was not really available to their parents, they are the first generation that can really reflect on the war and colonialism and contemporary challenges that Vietnam faces as it develops. It is without a doubt that the Vietnam art scene will continue to grow in the coming years so if you are in town do join a tour and we can’t wait to see what Sophie and her team creates in this new decade. To learn more about Sophie’s Art Tour you can check their website and follow them on FB and IG.
First published on June 9, 2020
