Sand painter Tri Duc tells the story of Vietnam's origins to international friends in Tunisia

On December 19, sand artist Tri Duc will leave for Tunisia to attend the 38th Neapolis International Kids Theatre Festival - 2025.

Image of Au Co and Lac Long Quan in the performance Origin - Photo: LINH DOAN

The festival runs from December 21 to 28. Sand artist Tri Duc will perform four shows in four cities and one workshop.

Beautiful Vietnam through Tri Duc's sand paintings.

To introduce to international friends at the festival, artist Tri Duc prepared a 30-minute program called Vietnam storytelling .

There are 4 pieces combined together including Hello Vietnam (music: Love song, author: Pham Duy), Origin (music: Heaven and Earth, author: Kitaro), Mother's diary (author: Nguyen Van Chung, singer: Hien Thuc), And the flowers will bloom (author: Yoko Kanno).

Tri Duc shared his thoughts with the festival organizers: "When the children in my hometown grew up, they asked their parents: What is Vietnam like? Which place is the most beautiful?

And that is also the question of strangers coming to Vietnam for the first time".

Sand painter Tri Duc performs Hello Vietnam! - Video : LINH DOAN

Tri Duc chose to answer the question with moving sand paintings so that international friends could admire the beauty of Vietnam.

The first part of the program is Hello Vietnam and Origins . The artist briefly introduces the history and culture of the Vietnamese people. These are emotional images with beautiful scenes of Vietnam from North to South.

Part two focuses on emotions, loving images of family, mother-child love from the performance Mother's Diary and the overcoming of hardships in And the Flowers Will Bloom .

Artist Tri Duc in the Vietnam storytelling program performed before leaving for Tunisia - Photo: LINH DOAN

On this trip, Tri Duc is traveling alone, so he will probably have a hard time taking care of everything himself. However, he feels very happy to be invited to attend a long-standing festival with many genres of programs for children.

He shared with Tuoi Tre Online : "This is a good opportunity for me to promote Vietnam to international friends, and also a chance to learn from friends in other countries when making programs for children."

Tri Duc with the performance Mother's Diary - Photo: LINH DOAN

What is simple and comes from the heart will have its own value.

In Vietnam storytelling, there is a completely new program called And the flowers will bloom . In this program, Tri Duc experiments with using colored sand paintings, carrying an international message for children.

Choosing colored sand was also something Tri Duc made difficult for himself. Because it was used only once, erasing it and continuing with a new image was much more difficult than with monochrome sand. However, because the performance was specifically for young audiences, he wanted to create a sparkling, colorful variety.

Tri Duc also upgraded the remaining three performances, making the images more iconic so that international friends could easily access them. To participate in the festival, Tri Duc had to prepare a detailed script and send it to the organizers in advance, on that basis they would send 5 experts to support Tri Duc in each performance.

According to the regulations, a program should last 30-40 minutes. For his program, Tri Duc thinks 30 minutes is just right, if it is too short then it won’t say enough, if it is too long then the audience will get bored.

Children rushed onto the stage to watch Uncle Tri Duc draw sand paintings in the performance And the Flowers Will Bloom - Photo: LINH DOAN

With AI participating so much in the creative field, Tri Duc believes that nothing can be predicted. However, he still receives quite a few shows every month and he is still "doing well" with his career.

He believes that artists themselves must still strive to create every day so that technology can serve them and not destroy them. "I think that something simple and from the heart always has its own value" - Tri Duc expressed.

Specifically, he emphasized that since he started working in the profession, his current sand painting display table is his 50th table. With the technical support, he had to try and make many mistakes to find the most satisfactory and effective creative tools.

To have the moving sand paintings for a performance, he persistently practiced at least 100 times. And after each performance, he had to review, edit, upgrade and gradually perfect them.

And he thinks that constant exploration and creativity will help artists survive in any situation or era.

Tri Duc comes from the field of puppetry. Graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Ho Chi Minh City, he worked at Tre Publishing House. After that, he became one of the prominent sand painters in Vietnam. Audiences loved Tri Duc when he made sand paintings for the song Mother's Diary .

Although he only learned the art of sand painting from abroad, thanks to his talent, Tri Duc is still the most mentioned person in this field.

Not only that, when he entered the theater stage with the play Am Binh , even though he only played the role of the old casuarina tree sitting and drawing sand paintings without saying a word, Tri Duc won a gold medal because he portrayed so emotionally, increasing the effectiveness of the play.

LINH DOAN

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/hoa-si-tranh-cat-tri-duc-ke-chuyen-coi-nguon-viet-nam-voi-ban-be-quoc-te-tai-tunisia-20251208153146604.htm