The video pictures an outstretched arm on a bed of luridly-coloured flowers, its opening and closing palm holding a live, beating snake-heart. Over seven minutes the thump-thump of the tiny heart weakens, and leeching thin threads of blood into the creased palm, beats increasingly less vigorously until it stops, marking the video end. The piece builds tension as audience-voyeurs witness the death of a vulnerable living thing, the slow pace and visual contrast between garish flowers and delicate, translucent pink pumping heart holding our gaze. The work’s weirdly lyrical, open-ended beauty displaying unequal power is heightened by its subtextual reference to foreign sex tourism in Vietnam, hinted at by its title Glitter’s Paradise. The ‘Glitter’ here is British rocker Gary Glitter who was infamously prosecuted in 2006 by the Vietnamese for paedophilia. The video, if inspired by the Gary Glitter incident, ultimately points to Dinh Q. Lê’s wider belief in art’s capacity to speak back to distortions of historical portrayals, power imbalances, and the hegemonic spread of American culture, among others. In these works, artistic force is faith and beauty, pushing past inequity.