Born 1979 in Hanoi (Vietnam), lives and works in Paris (France).

Thu-Van Tran focuses equally on materials and words, which she regards as areas lending themselves to visual investigation. Her explorations of semantic associations give rise to forms, then to substances which, she says, she kneads mentally and physically. Often rooted in her family history, her works raise the issues of displacement, space, and imprint via references to the colonial context of her native Vietnam.

Through her sculpture practice Thu-Van Tran is able to explore history as a political tool to be visually and aesthetically interpreted via discourse or contemplation. For Reclaim the Earth, Thu-Van Tran imagines a vegetal diorama inspired among others by a ceiling of the Palazzo Grimani in Venice. Both an archive and a sensory space of nature, the work presents a set of invasive and toxic plants, the result of natural or man-made mutations – at the very heart of the artist’s current research. This herbarium, subjective and immersive, questions the cohabitation and hybridization of these plants, as well as our relations with them.

Thu-Van Tran is represented by the galleries Almine Rech (Paris), Meessen De Clercq (Brussels) and Rüdiger Schöttle (Munchen).