Born in Hanoi (Vietnam) in 1979, Thu Van Tran lives and works in Paris. In the early 2000s, while studying at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, she discovered what she calls "the part maudite" [cursed part] of classical sculpture: the opulence of monumental bronzes, the systematic destruction of moulds and casts, their forms persisting only in negative, ghostlike. This logic permeates the artist’s entire practice, just like her rubber tree casts, her photograms, films and stories always reveal the memory of an imprint or of a vanished hold. In particular that of the successive occupations that marked Vietnam, which she left at the age of two. Thu Van Tran has a polymorphic practice and she approaches materials as much as words like open spaces: her explorations and semantic associations give rise to plastic forms that allow her to interweave personal and collective histories.
