Thao Nguyen Phan is a multimedia artist working across video, painting, and installation, based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Trained as a painter, she draws on literature, philosophy, and daily life to explore ambiguous social conventions and historical narratives. Co-founder of the collective Art Labor, she develops cross-disciplinary projects benefiting local communities. Expanding her “theatrical fields,” Phan integrates performance, gesture, and moving images. She was a 2016–17 Rolex Protégée, mentored by Joan Jonas.
Phan has exhibited internationally, including Palais de Tokyo, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Tate St Ives, Venice Biennale, Chisenhale Gallery, WIELS, and Sharjah Biennial, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award.
Thao Nguyen Phan
Becoming Alluvium (2019–Ongoing)
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 recounts the 2018 collapse of a hydroelectric dam in Laos, which caused many deaths and displaced thousands.
The following sequence ‘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 città invisibili—Invisible Cities.
Phan’s fable concludes with a Khmer folktale about human greed and beauty. The animated characters reference the beheaded Khmer statues that were taken from Cambodia by colonising powers. They are superimposed onto engravings by Louis Delaporte, a French expeditionist and artist.