Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Trained as a painter, Phan is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses video, painting and installation. Drawing from literature, philosophy and daily life, Phan observes ambiguous issues in social conventions and history. Phan exhibits internationally, with solo and group exhibitions including Palais de Tokyo (2025) Pirelli HangarBiccoca(2023), Tate St Ives (2022), Venice Art Biennale (2022), Chisenhale gallery (London, 2020); WIELS (Brussels, 2020), Sharjah Biennial (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2019); among others. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award. In addition to her work as a multimedia artist, she is co-founder of the collective Art Labor, which explores cross disciplinary practices and develops art projects that benefit the local community. Thao Nguyen Phan is expanding her “theatrical fields”, including what she calls performance gesture and moving images. Phan is a 2016-2017 Rolex Protégée, mentored by internationally acclaimed, New York-based, performance and video artist, Joan Jonas.
Thao Nguyen Phan
Becoming Alluvium
This fictional story reveals the consequences of an imbalanced relationship between humans and the environment. The film is introduced by a poem about unity by Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore’s words on nature, nurture and misdirected love unlock Phan’s episodes about destruction, disintegration and rebirth. The opening story tells of a flood that causes the death of two brothers. The siblings remain forever bound to the Mekong River in cycles of reincarnation. Their story, in this life, recounts the 2018 collapse of a hydroelectric dam in Laos which caused many deaths and displaced thousands. The following ‘First Reincarnation’ captures the industrial life of the Mekong River, with readings from Marguerite Duras’s novel L ’Amant (The Lover). The ‘Second Reincarnation’ overlays documentary footage of waste and excess with parables on consumption from Italo Calvino’s fictitious travelogue Le cittàinvisibili (Invisible Cities). Phan’s fable concludes with a Khmer folktale about human greed and beauty. The animated characters reference the decapitated Khmer statues that were taken from
Cambodia by colonising powers. They are superimposed onto engravings by Louis Delaporte, a French expeditionist and artist.
Written by Sally Noall for Tate St Ives.