As the rice terraces around Sapa turn from green to gold this September, Hotel de la Coupole Sapa – MGallery Collection will open a month-long exhibition offering another way to encounter the northern Vietnamese landscape: through the work of five contemporary artists.
Presented in collaboration with Hanoi Studio Gallery, Upon the Mountain, Down on the Hill will run from September 25 to October 25, 2026. The exhibition brings together 28 works by Pham Thai Binh, Nguyen Ngoc Thanh, Nguyen Quoc Trung, Pham Tra My and Pham Thuy Tien in the hotel’s lobby-level Art Gallery Area.
Rather than treating the landscape simply as scenery, the exhibition explores its relationship with people, memory and emotion. The five artists bring experience across painting, sculpture, traditional lacquer, silk and large-scale installation. Through colour, form, texture and human presence, their works consider how mountains and hills are observed, remembered and transformed by the imagination.
“At harvest time, Sapa’s landscape changes almost by the day, encouraging people to pause and look more closely,” said a representative of Hotel de la Coupole Sapa – MGallery Collection. “This exhibition extends that experience into the hotel. Visitors can encounter the mountains and terraces outside, then see the different memories and emotions they inspire in the work of five Vietnamese artists. It feels entirely at home in a place where art and storytelling are already part of the journey.”
The exhibition belongs naturally within Hotel de la Coupole’s theatrical interiors. Conceived by architect and designer Bill Bensley, the hotel imagines a meeting between the French haute couture of the 1920s and 1930s and the colours, patterns and craft traditions of Sapa’s ethnic communities. Paintings, antiques, fashion pieces and collected objects appear throughout the property, placing the new works within a wider encounter with art, history and place.
Upon the Mountain, Down on the Hill is the first exhibition of its kind organised by Hotel de la Coupole. The hotel hopes to build on it by making exhibitions a more regular part of its cultural calendar.
The timing allows travellers to experience the landscape framing the exhibition during one of its most distinctive seasons. Across Muong Hoa Valley and the villages surrounding Sapa, ripening rice brings bands of gold to the mountain terraces as the annual harvest progresses. Visitors can spend time among the fields before returning to encounter the landscape again through the materials and perspectives of contemporary Vietnamese art.
Back at the hotel, the meeting of French and regional influences continues through its gastronomy. Chic serves classic French dishes made with local ingredients, alongside flavours inspired by Vietnam’s northern highlands. As an additional Heritage Days experience, Hotel de la Coupole’s Director of Culinary, Oliver Mette, and
Michelin-starred chef Nicolai P. Wiedmer will present The Art of Flavours on September 26, a four-hands dinner combining seasonal ingredients with contemporary European techniques.
Upon the Mountain, Down on the Hill forms part of MGallery Collection’s 2026 Heritage Days programme, inspired by European Heritage Days. Participating hotels mark the occasion with exhibitions, performances, culinary events and other experiences connected to the histories and cultures of their destinations.
The exhibition will open with a ceremony from 14:30 to 17:00 on September 25, welcoming hotel guests, Sapa residents, art lovers and travellers. Together, the exhibition and the harvest season offer visitors the opportunity to move between Sapa as a physical landscape and a source of imagination—seen across the terraces, interpreted through Vietnamese art and carried through the hotel’s design and dining.
