Phong Bui Practices Meditation Through Art

Born in Huế, Vietnam in 1964, Bui came over with his family after spending three and a half years in labor camps. He spoke no English but quickly learned, earned his high school GED, and later graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, receiving a first prize in senior thesis for illustration in 1985 which opened a lot of doors. He was awarded a traveling fellowship from the New York Studio School in 1986 and visited Italy, saturating himself in art.

Art & Object spent six hours with Bui in his large Brooklyn loft, surrounded by Goya prints, Guston and Rackstraw Downes drawings, countless sculptures and paintings he'd bought or traded with fellow artists, a few given as birthday gifts, alongside thousands of books. He reads voraciously. When we met, he was reading The Idealist about Kissinger. During our free-wheeling conversation, Bui often bookended his answers with insightful views on current affairs. We began by discussing the difference between a trip and a journey. Bui said, “Creative beings have a need to leave their home. They take a journey, a lifelong labor of love that never ends.”

Dian Parker: When you arrived in the States, did you know your journey had begun?

Phong Bui: As a child, I knew. My beloved grandmother, a Buddhist, had a deep influence on me. She said, “Grandson, when you grow up, you will suffer like everyone else and never think your suffering is better than theirs. Be sure to suffer in the right way.” It means to love what you love and you follow it, no matter what. I spent one year at the New York Studio School and was very unhappy—my first year in New York. Then, I had an epiphany when I went to MoMA, alone for the first time, and recognized the soul of an artist, this holiness of life.

DP: What artist has had the deepest influence?

PB: Willem de Kooning, absolutely. He created his own life. Coming over from Holland, he first worked for Harper's Bazaar but found he didn’t like being told what to do and took a job as a housepainter. I admired him so much that I became a painter and plasterer, on and off till 2010. My nickname was Skimbo. I did that until my body wore out. America has forgotten to support artisans, laborers that work with their hands. De Kooning admired his own skill as a house painter. It is a terrible moral collapse to not respect vocational skills including paving our roads, fixing our cars, cleaning our houses, etc.

DP: That’s why immigrants are so important for this country—a necessary balance, a grounding force.

PB: Immigrants come here for opportunities, to start a new life, and to give their families a new life. They did not come here to exploit this country but to make a contribution. The Brooklyn Rail is my contribution.

DP: In the Rail, you write the editorial for every issue. In them, you give us the big picture. They aren’t bipartisan. You not only give us history, but specific names and dates. I learn so much about this country and history reading them. I’d like to quote from an editorial you wrote in 2025: ‘America is a nation of extreme contradictions. It is capable of losing its mojo by a self-effacing inferiority complex compared to other old cultures in the world, but also capable of expressing a strong sense of self-entitlement, arrogance, and narcissism in order to assert supremacy.’ How do you manage to be on 15 foundation and nonprofit boards, curate countless exhibits, write editorials, manage a staff of 18, countless editors and writers, put out the Rail every month, make portraits and meditation drawings, and write?

PB: I have a very predictable routine. I wake up at six every morning, do a 15-minute workout, my to-do list, read, work with my team from 10am to 6pm, go to openings and dinners in the evening. The creative force is unpredictable, and I have to be open to it. But I am very predictable. I can be unpredictable if someone tries to conform me. Like you, I don’t censor my enthusiasm.

DP: You’ve been awarded many honors, including a Rabkin Prize in 2017 and others since then. Which has been particularly meaningful for you?

PB: The honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts in 2020 was seen by my family as a stamp of approval, but the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts in 2021 meant much more since my work was recognized as a cultural worker, joining my beloved friend and mentor Aggie Gund, recipient of the same award in 1998. In any case, I have been countering speed with slowness of culture. To bring warmth to social media. To elevate the long form, the process. Like my drawings that take eight to ten hours, requiring deep focus. I’m a nomadic rabbi that eats books.

DP: You do so much and many people are magnetized to you. How do you navigate all that attention without ego? You are able to drop boundaries for the person to come into you.

PB: I was brought up a Buddhist. Christ on the cross symbolizes individual suffering. Buddha was trying to get rid of himself, the opposite of the West. My portrait drawings celebrate the uniqueness of the individual, and my meditation paintings aim to attain absence, not being there, the void. I practice meditation through my art. I am not unique. I’m a part of the social fabric, a part of community. 

DP: How can someone nurture what you have?

PB: Any one of us should nurture ourselves as de Kooning had once famously said, "For milk to become yogurt, it needs culture." I discovered early on that culture has been associated with the cultural elite. Rail is radical in not spoon-feeding the readers nor condescending to them either. I am a cosmic optimist.