Thu-Van Tran
Thu-Van Tran was born in 1979 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She lives and works in Paris, France.
An engaged figure in the French art scene, Thu-Van Tran has gained international recognition in recent years. In 2017, she stood out with a remarkable installation at the Venice Biennale. In 2018, she was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize, and in 2022, she completed a major commission of site-specific works for the CMOA – Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, United States. More recently, her work was exhibited at the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection in the group show “Avant l’orage”. The MAMAC – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the City of Nice also recently dedicated a large-scale solo exhibition to her, spanning over 1600 m². In 2023, she received the prestigious Rosa Schapire Prize awarded by the Kunsthalle Museum in Hamburg. She was announced as one of the 16 Villa Medici (Roma) Fellows for 2025-26.
Over the past twenty years, Thu-Van Tran has developed a body of work in which memory plays a central role, expressed through sculptural installations, monumental murals, and filmed narratives. Whether through form, color, or inherent drama, the environments she creates are always grounded in a political language whose power lies in its poetry. Her practice is inspired by literature, history, and nature, focusing on how the concepts of contamination, identity, and language unfold within these realms. A passionate and eclectic reader of Marguerite Duras, Albert Camus, and Joseph Conrad, she undertook in 2013 a subjective translation of Heart of Darkness (1899), which she presented at Art Basel. Deeply attuned to Vietnamese literature — from the poetry of Ho Chi Minh to the novels of Duong Thu Huong — Thu-Van Tran continues to affirm the transformative and emancipatory power of writing and language.
Thu-Van Tran’s works are included in several private foundations and public collections (regional, national, and international), such as the one of the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) of Brisbane (Australia), the prestigious MNAM – National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Georges Pompidou (France), Kunsthalle Museum in Hamburg (Germany), Frac Île-de-France (France), the Louis Vuitton Foundation (France), the Pinault Collection (France), the Beaux-Arts of Paris (France), the MAMAC – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the City of Nice (France), the Louvre Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), as well as the Kadist Foundation (France/USA) and the Vehbi Koç Foundation in Istanbul (Turkey).
Thu-Van Tran is represented by Almine Rech Gallery (Paris, London, New York, Shanghai), Meessen De Clercq (Brussels), and Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery (Munich).