I Teach My Hand to Sleep
09 – 30 Jan 2026
Courtyard HIROO (Japan)
〒106-0031 Tokyo, Minato City, Nishiazabu, 4 Chome−21−2 コートヤードHIROO 1A
From the organizer:
From 9 to 30 January 2026, Courtyard HIROO (Tokyo, Japan) presents I Teach My Hand to Sleep, a solo exhibition by Vietnamese artist Tran Thao Mien. This marks Tran Thao Mien’s first solo exhibition in Japan.
I Teach My Hand to Sleep unfolds as both a quiet resistance and a gentle invocation. Rooted in the artist’s lived experience within the fashion industry and contemporary art, the exhibition reflects on alienated labor, accelerated time, and the persistent deferral of rest in modern life. Drawing resonance from Marx’s critique of alienated labor where time is extracted until even rest becomes instrumental, Miên approaches rest not as the opposite of work, but as its suppressed condition. Here, rest becomes radical not because it is idle, but because it interrupts the demand to be useful.
The exhibition brings together sculptural installations and textile-based works produced over several years, marking six years of Tran Thao Mien’s transition from fashion to contemporary art. Rather than foregrounding outcomes or productivity, the works accumulate slowly, like stitches layered over time. They do not seek resolution, but invite viewers into a recalibration of rhythm—toward time, toward the body, and toward forms of relation that resist efficiency.
Throughout the exhibition, textiles function not only as material but as a mode of thinking. Silk, linen, jute, woven mats, used camping chairs, lacquered wood, and discarded fibers all carry histories of repetitive, embodied, feminized, and often invisible labor. Stitching, weaving, and assembling become acts of staying with sensation long enough for it to transform—a slow, relational practice that resists performance and productivity.
I Teach My Hand to Sleep is not a rejection of labor, but a re-imagination of it. The exhibition asks: what forms of labor allow us to remain in relation—with ourselves, with others, and with the world? Here, rest, stillness, and care emerge not as withdrawal, but as conditions for attention, creativity, and becoming.
About Courtyard HIROO
Courtyard HIROO is an architectural and cultural project that seeks to reframe the notion of “wealth” in post-growth Japanese society. Adapted from a former government housing complex of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the site preserves its structural integrity while reconfiguring interior and exterior spaces around the idea of a shared courtyard within the urban fabric.
Designed by Kyohei Shinogawa (debual LLC.) with landscape design by Takanori Fukuoka (Fd Landscape), Courtyard HIROO emphasizes spatial memory, temporal elasticity, and holistic health—understood as the well-being of individuals in relation to nature and community. Tran Thao Mien’s exhibition resonates closely with this ethos, positioning rest and non-action as essential values for contemporary life.
About the Artist
Trần Thảo Miên is a Hanoi-based artist and cultural practitioner whose textile sculptures and installations critically examine alienated labour and the contemplative power of inactivity, rooted in her Textile education at London College of Fashion (University of the Arts London), working in fashion industry in London and Vietnam, and her extensive solitude promenade across Asia.
In experimenting with unalienated labour, Mien co-found Collective Sonson, working relaxingly, just enough to sustain their curiosity on traditional craft techniques across Vietnam. Her artistic inquiries extend beyond object-making into the domains of sensory healing, the restoration of community relations, and sustainable modes of living. The collective gained national recognition by winning both First Prize and the Audience Choice Award at Vietnam Design Week 2020 for their project Stillness Corner, praised for regenerating Vietnamese identity through designs that merge traditional techniques with contemporary design, prioritising the preservation of cultural soul over aesthetic imitation.
Miên is also a founding member of ddur.productions, an open collective supporting experimental exhibition projects, and AiRViNe– Artist-in-Residency Vietnam Network, advocating for artists’ freedom of mobility, while serving as a creative supervisor at Hanoi Grapevine. Her commitment to education and knowledge-sharing includes contributions to programs at RMIT University (Vietnam), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore), and sustainability research with Pratt Institute (USA).
Notable exhibitions include PRICK! Needlework Now (RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2025), Young Birds from Strange Mountains (Schwules Museum, Berlin, 2024-2025), Who is Weaving the Sky’s Nest (Yeo Workshop, Singapore, 2024), Means of Production (Lunch Hour, New York, 2024), Mind & Machines (Vietnamese Women’s Museum, Hanoi & Hai An Gallery, HCMC, 2023), Foliage IV (Vincom Center for Contemporary Art, Hanoi, 2022), and Citizen Earth (Vietnam Museum of Biology, Hanoi, 2020). She is a Fellow of the Mekong Cultural Hub’s Creative Action Program (2024), a participant in KOFICE’s CPI Cultural Experts Training Program (South Korea, 2024), an artist in residency at Van Mieu – Temple of Literature, San Art and Koganecho Arts Management Centre, and a recipient of the Inclusion Award from Goethe-Institut Hanoi (2024).
