Thu-Van Tran

The French-Vietnamese artist Thu-Van Tran (*1979, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Vietnam) is at home in many media. For her conceptual approach, she works with painting and sculpture, which can sometimes involve entire rooms, as well as photography, drawing, video art and performance. The different groups of works create a narrative that raises questions about our ability to remember history, rituals and legacies of entire nations. The post-colonial relationship between Vietnam and France and the USA is often examined. The artist is interested in how the past remains visible in the present, how historical and collective consciousness interact with each other. She draws on concepts of contamination, identity and language from cultural studies and integrates observations from literature, history, architecture and nature into her visual language. Through this poetic, delicate search for traces of language and materials, central historical moments become tangible and experienceable moments also for us as viewers.

The works by Thu-Van Tran are part of numerous international collections, including the Agnès Rein Collection; Kadist, Paris; Josée and Marc Gensollen Collection, Marseille; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Lidice Memorial, Lidice; Musée Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Pierluigi and Natalina Remotti Fondation, Camogli; Sanders Collection, Amsterdam; Vehbi Koc Fondation, Istanbul; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Queensland Art Gallery; Kunsthalle Hamburg.