Open Studio: Tra My Nguyen & Lam Na at Vietnam Art Collection (VAC)

Opening: 05 pm – 07 pm, Fri 13 June 2025
Display: 10 am – 06 pm, 14 June – 06 July 2025 (Please kindly note: VAC will be closed on Monday, 16 June)
VAC Hanoi
6/44/11 Tô Ngọc Vân, Tây Hồ, Hà Nội

From the organizer:

Vietnam Art Collection (VAC) is delighted to present the. Open Studio of our Summer 2025 artists-in-residence, Tra My Nguyen and Lam Na, offering a glimpse into their ongoing projects and the beginnings of new bodies of work developed during their residency at VAC Hanoi.

Tra My Nguyen: “SHE WHO MOVES”

Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Tra My Nguyen works across sculpture, moving image, installation, and textiles, recontextualizing material culture through a diasporic lens. Her practice investigates the intersections of the body with power structures, memory, and histories of resilience and transformation. Through speculative narratives, her work explores embodiment, alienation, and the complexities of becoming within a globalized framework.

During her residency at Vietnam Art Collection (VAC), Nguyen presents footages from a new short film developed in and around Hanoi. The work is informed by her ongoing research into the entanglement of personal and collective memory within the Vietnamese diaspora. Shot on location across rural and urban landscapes, the film follows a fragmented, symbolic journey of a young woman in transit – emotionally and physically – and through moments of rupture, ambiguity, and intimate transformation.

Drawing on Vietnamese motorbike culture, the notion of womanhood, and the surrounding ecology, Nguyen frames movement as a form of becoming. Central to the film is the use of a silicone bodysuit as a primary tool of affect. The film dissolves fixed timelines, inviting the viewer into a space of subtle disorientation and embodied reflection.
Alongside the film, Nguyen presents a series of recent textile works that extend her exploration of materiality, echoing the film’s themes through form and texture.

Through this Open Studio, Nguyen invites viewers to consider how bodies, images and materials carry traces, and how transformation might emerge not through spectacle, but through the quiet thresholds of rupture, sensuality and resilience.

Artist Talk with Tra My Nguyen will take place on Sunday, 15 June, from 04 pm to 06 pm at VAC Hanoi.

Lâm Na: “It’s been many years since we last met”

Lam Na works at the intersection of found objects and fired earth, integrating culturally significant elements with terracotta to examine material transformation and temporal relationships. Her practice, which she describes as “soft-elastic collisions,” is rooted in the discovery of earth as a “prehistoric hard drive” – a silent witness to the passage and transformation of matter across time.

During her residency, the artist developed a new body of work engaging with objects related to the Sa Huynh culture, an ancient civilization in southern Vietnam whose origins are variously dated by scholars between 1000 BCE and 200 CE, existing in parallel with the Dong Son culture in the north. By incorporating found objects in prehistoric caves in Nghe An, the artist’s terracotta works create dialogues between past and present, tradition and innovation. Her meticulous firing and mounting processes allow these found objects to retain their integrity while participating in new material conversations.

In tandem with her sculptural practice, she initiated her ambitious project of coffee drawings on Dzo paper – a series begun alongside the opening of her coffee shop as part of her studio space. Each drawing, rendered in coffee and sometimes ink, explores the relationship between language and art through a juxtaposition of letters, poems, or simply repeated texts with portraits and figures based on real people in her life. To date, she has completed close to 365 drawings, with the goal of reaching 1,000 works. The drawings will be presented as a site-specific installation alongside a petrified tree trunk. The Open Studio will feature an archival video documenting the completed drawings, offering a window into her daily practice and the evolving visual language she is building.

Lam Na is currently participating in the Artist in Residence Vietnam Network (AiRViNe) #3 and will host a public event organized by AiRViNe during her residency.

Stay connected with our social media channels for the most up-to-date information on both events.

About artists

Tra My Nguyen (b. 1992, Hanoi) is a Berlin-based artist whose work has been exhibited internationally, including at Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (DE), Bienalsur (AR), VCCA Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VN), and the State of Fashion Biennale (NL). She has presented solo and duo exhibitions at Grotto (Berlin) and Human Resources (Los Angeles), among others. In 2020, she received the Fashion Position Jury Prize and is currently participating in the BPA// Berlin program for artists.

Lâm Na (b. 1987, Vinh) studied at Hue University of Fine Arts (2011) and Master’s in Visual Arts from Mahasarakham University, Thailand (2014). Her breakthrough solo exhibition “Have Been – Eternally” (2023) at Hanoi Studio Gallery received significant public response. She has exhibited at the ASEAN Contemporary Art Exhibition (Bangkok), ASEAN Art Festival (Hua Hin), and Seoul Art Festival (Seoul).

About VAC Residency Hanoi

Fully funded by the Vietnam Art Collection, VAC Residency Hanoi is part of the LAUNCH program, a platform dedicated to supporting artists and cultural practitioners working in or coming from Vietnam. Inaugurated in April 2024, the residency encourages participants to explore new materials, methods, and conceptual approaches that extend or challenge their existing practices. We actively foster cross-disciplinary exploration and collaborative practice. Through partnerships with institutions and individuals worldwide, we offer artists access to a range of resources that enrich the residency experience and strengthen their professional networks with cross-regional visibility.

About VAC

VAC is a non-profit art organization based in Hanoi and New York. At VAC, we see the collection as a network of communities, and building a collection is a collaborative process of engaging with the community and contributing to a healthy ecosystem where artists, curators, writers, and creatives can grow and thrive. Our initiative centers around two core programs: ARTIFACT, a research-driven archival project to amplify the voices of artists and creatives in and from Vietnam, and LAUNCH, an alternative support program dedicated to the Vietnamese art community. VAC also stewards a collection of Vietnamese arts ranging from modern masters of the Indochina period to emerging artists of our time. We work alongside our advisory board and patron network to bridge cross-platform collaboration and forge long-term partnerships beyond borders.