Skip to main content

Thu-Van Tran

Thu-Van Tran was born in 1979 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She lives and works in Paris, France.

A major figure on the French art scene, Thu-Van Tran now enjoys international recognition. In 2017, she gained widespread attention with a remarkable installation at the Venice Biennale. The following year, she was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize, and in 2022 she completed a major site-specific commission for the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. More recently, her work was exhibited at the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection. Over the past two decades, she has developed a wide-ranging body of work, whose cosmic dimension is evident in her sculptural installations, monumental frescoes, and film-based narratives.

At the core of her practice lies a sustained exploration of materiality, image, and meaning. Her ongoing series Colours of Grey, begun in 2012, scrutinizes the semiotics and resonances of color. The titular gray is produced through a rigorous process in which the artist uses a variety of pigments, each corresponding to one of the Rainbow Herbicides, tactical-use chemical weapons employed by the American military during the Vietnam War to defoliate and desecrate the landscape. As the bright and distinct tones mix, they form an entirely new palette, a poignant reflection on the aftermath of violence.

Whether through their color, form or innate drama, the milieus in which the artist immerses her audience are invariably built on the basis of a political language whose strength lies in its poetry. As an avid and eclectic reader of Marguerite Duras and Albert Camus as well as Philip Roth and science-fiction authors, as the subjective translator of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), as a mystical pilgrim to the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, and as an attentive reader of Vietnamese literature, including poems by Ho Chi Minh and novels by Duong Thu Huong, Thu-Van Tran continues to affirm the transformative and emancipatory power of language. The artist has constructed her sculpted, painted and filmed oeuvre on the framework of texts that she has written or borrowed, transcribed or verbalized, and she admits that “the starting point in [her] work is often a semantic utterance.”

Following a residency at PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Art) in 2025, she joined the 2025–2026 cohort of residents at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, where she continues to develop the Colours of Grey series. In 2026, she will be the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and has also been invited by KINDL in Berlin for another solo presentation.

Works by Thu-Van Tran currently feature in several local and international public collections, such as the prestigious Collection of the MNAM, Musée National d’Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou (France), the Pinault Collection, the Collection of Frac-Île de France (France), the Louvre Abu-Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), the Collection of the Fondation Kadist (France / United-States), the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques) and the collection of the Beaux Arts de Paris

  • Biography

    read or download

  • Bibliography

    read or download

Selected artworks

  • Thu-Van Tran, Colors of Grey, 2023

    Thu-Van Tran Colors of Grey, 2023

    Acrylic on canvas
    150 x 115 cm
    59 x 45 1/2 in

  • Thu-Van Tran, Colors of Grey, 2023

    Thu-Van Tran Colors of Grey, 2023

    Acrylic on canvas
    150 x 115 cm
    59 x 45 1/2 in

  • Thu-Van Tran, Trail Dust #1, 2021

    Thu-Van Tran Trail Dust #1, 2021

    Graphite on canson paper
    85 x 120 cm
    33 1/2 x 47 1/2 in
    96 x 131 cm (framed)
    38 x 51 1/2 in (framed)

  • Thu-Van Tran, Rainbow Herbicides #2, 2020

    Thu-Van Tran Rainbow Herbicides #2, 2020

    Graphite sur papier Canson, peinture aérosol 
    Graphite on Canson paper, spray paint
    68 x 57.5 x 3.5 cm (framed)
    26 3/4 x 22 5/8 x 1 3/8 in
    66 x 55 cm (unframed)
    © Rebecca Fanuele

  • Thu-Van Tran, Colors of Grey #9, 2019

    Thu-Van Tran Colors of Grey #9, 2019

    Pigment, binder, watercolor paper 
    59 x 49 x 2.4 cm (framed)
    23 1/4 x 19 1/4 x 1 in (framed)
    52 x 42.2 cm (unframed)
    20 1/2 x 16 5/8 in (unframed)
    © Rebecca Fanuele 

  • Thu-Van Tran, Holding Up the Immaterial #2, 2019

    Thu-Van Tran Holding Up the Immaterial #2, 2019

    Ceramic
    120 x 60 x 22 cm
    47 1/4 x 23 5/8 x 8 5/8 in
    Unique

  • Thu-Van Tran, Le génie qui redresse le ciel #5, 2021

    Thu-Van Tran Le génie qui redresse le ciel #5, 2021

    Porcelain

    18 x 10 x 12 cm

    7 1/2 x 4 x 4 1/2 in

  • Thu-Van Tran, Novel Without a Title #5, 2019

    Thu-Van Tran Novel Without a Title #5, 2019

    Bronze
    Unique
    202 x 35 x 14 cm
    79 1/2 x 13 3/4 x 5 1/2 in
    Leaf : 135 cm
    © Rebecca Fanuele

  • Thu-Van Tran, Penetrable - Rainforest #2, 2019

    Thu-Van Tran Penetrable - Rainforest #2, 2019

    Rubber and pigment on linen canvas
    180 x 150 cm
    70 7/8 x 59 1/8 in
    © Rebecca Fanuele

  • Thu-Van Tran, From Green To Orange, 2022

    Thu-Van Tran From Green To Orange, 2022

    Silver print , alcohol, ink and rust
    95 x 75 cm
    37 1/2 x 29 1/2 in

  • Thu-Van Tran, Colors of grey, 2022

    Thu-Van Tran Colors of grey, 2022

    Pigment and medium on linen cotton canvas

    160 x 220 cm
    63 x 86 1/2 in

  • Thu-Van Tran, Colors of Grey, 2024

    Thu-Van Tran Colors of Grey, 2024

    Lime, pigment and binder on linen canvas

    70 x 90 x 5 cm - 27 1/2 x 35 1/2 x 2 in (unframed)
    73.7 x 93.7 x 7.6 cm - 29 x 37 x 3 in (framed)

  • Thu-Van Tran, Rainbow Herbicides 2, 2024

    Thu-Van Tran Rainbow Herbicides 2, 2024

    Pencil and aerosol paint on paper

    100 x 150 cm - 39 1/2 x 59 in (unframed)
    110.8 x 161 x 6.3 cm - 43 5/48 x 63 3/8 x 2 1/2 in (framed)

Thu-Van Tran: In spring, ghosts return

Gallery exhibitions

Museum exhibitions

Selected press

Explore further