Vietnam's Propaganda Art: Getting the Message Across in Ho Chi Minh City!

- June 30, 2019

Out and about in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) you can’t miss those big, bold and colourful propaganda art posters plastered on billboards and walls, along and up-high on the city’s chaotic streets. This unique and iconic art form isn’t for tourist’s benefit or decorative purposes. In Vietnam, propaganda art is highly informative, closely connected to its development – from nationalist struggles to post-reunification. It relays important political, social, economic and cultural messages from the Socialist Republic Government and local People’s Committees, to the Vietnamese public, besides covering landmark national events and anniversaries.

The posters speak for themselves, literally. This hand-painted. graphic-style art is brightly coloured (invariably emblazoned in red, reflecting the national flag), with a strong image that is usually direct, symbolic and simplistic and with colours, light and shapes much bolder than the norm. With straightforward and concise slogans or information splashed across the images, the message is communicated easily and directly in mere nanoseconds – pretty important when every man and his dog (literally, in Ho Chi Minh City) whizzes past on their motorbike – or to a lesser extent, on public buses or automobiles. Displayed everywhere – even in rice fields and up hillsides – propaganda art has imprinted itself on the psyches of millions of Vietnamese for decades.

In Vietnam, the preferred art form of Communist nations developed in the 1940s, discovered as a super-effective tool for communicating vital social and political messages and for boosting the country’s revolutionary spirit (along with omnipresent communal street loudspeakers). Unsurprisingly, the most prolific period was during the wars – First Indochina and Vietnam –where stirring posters were used as an effective weapon on the nation’s ideological front, helping keep wartime spirits up and encouraging patriotism, production activities and resistance against the enemy. And mighty important for the subsequent North and South reunification movement and post-war national reconstruction.

As recently as the 1990s, propaganda posters were practically the only advertisements out on Vietnam’s streets. Fast forward today, where, amid a techno-obsessed nation developing at warp-speed factor 10, propaganda art competes with encroaching modern-day corporate and commercial billboards (although the former looks far more interesting than all the uniform advertising dross posted up around the globe). Given Vietnam’s shifting socio-economic and political aspects and continued peacetime, the volume of propaganda posters has significantly dwindled, albeit in the nation’s political and ideological capital, Hanoi, they’re still a visible force.

Despite this and a flagging interest from its target audience, propaganda art is still relevant today and out there on Saigon’s streets –more than can be said for those infernal loud-speakers. No longer focused on wars and nationalist struggles, propaganda art has been given a new lease of life in Vietnamese society, helping develop the nation’s ideals, modernization and prosperity.

Not packing the ideological punch of its predecessors, nevertheless it’s still an important form of public communication, relaying the latest social-economic campaigns and state policies: from family planning and state-assisted education to avoiding HIV / AIDS and saying no to the evil of drugs; the latter two, I've found, usually in urban residential areas, not downtown. to harnessing industry and agricultural potentials ......

Yikes, well that's telling you!

and marking major political events, like the National Congress or legislative elections (I've yet to see any posters telling locals to quit beeping their horns, but I live in hope). .....

Then of course, marking anniversaries related to Ho Chi Minh, the beloved former President and "forefather” of modern-day Vietnam......

Surprising to see in this day and age, this Soviet-style, overtly patriotic art form on the free-wheeling streets of Vietnam’s capitalist-mad, economic powerhouse, juxtapositioned against a backdrop of modern high-rises and temples to mass consumerism. All in all, nostalgic pop-ups of bygone times and an enduring legacy of Vietnam’s momentous history and indomitable spirit, still evident as as the city embraces 21st century development......

Dwarfed by a Temple of Mass Consumerism, AKA Vincom Centre, one of Saigon's new glitziest malls

Old and the new street art....

and strikingly juxtapositioned against all the city's crazy modern development....

Same board, but another week bringing a different message....

And secondly, it's a surprise seeing so many posters still marking landmark national events, such as Vietnam’s Independence (1945) and Reunification (1975).....

.....and what I'm surprised the most, covering the nation's historic wars, with blatant anti -US sentiment and epic battles "celebrated" every year, like Dien Bien Phu (1954) and the infamous Tet Offensive (1968)!

Anyway, whatever the message, not confined to swanky galleries or luxurious establishments, this is accessible street art which everyone can enjoy. In a league of their own compared to street art murals in Malaysia and Singapore. If you’re lucky enough to track them down, buy one of the original posters, now deemed valuable works of art, If that's beyond your budget, snap-up one of the smaller-sized replicas – both varieties make the ultimate in souvenirs and look super cool on your walls back home!

The Jade(d) Empress Post-script Alert!

What a sign of the times and coming to a big screen near you.... literally! These days, now flashing electronically on big screens stuck high-up on buildings... so everyone, including all the motorbike traffic gets the message, especially during manic rush hours! Talk about adapting to the modern era!

Sometimes, propaganda art gets taken "on board" and made into a short animated film - moving pictures, as it were - to really get the message across....