Contemporary Vietnamese Visual Artists

The KIRTI booklet collection brings together a wide range of contemporary Vietnamese visual practitioners - painters, sculptors, multimedia artists, photo artists, documentary photographers, and photojournalists - through intimate, reflective conversations centered not simply on their artworks, but on the conditions, impulses, and personal philosophies that make those works possible.

Dung Quoc Nguyen

Dũng Quốc Nguyễn (b.1983, Đắk Lắk) is a Vietnamese painter based in Ho Chi Minh City. He describes his practice as a visual diary about people who are marginalized in Vietnamese society. His work includes depictions of sex workers, migrant workers, and a transgender community living at the outskirts of Saigon. All paintings and sketches belong to the artist and are reproduced here with his permission.

Phuong Duc

Phương Đức (b. 1982, Lai Châu) is a Hanoi-based painter and sculptor known for his naïve style drawing on Vietnamese folk motifs, and for his use of organic materials, such as pigments made from soil.

Mai Nguyen Anh

Mai Nguyên Anh (b.1992, Hanoi) is a visual artist, photo-journalist, and organizer based in Hanoi. He is a co-founder of Matca, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting photography as an art form in Vietnam. All images and accompanying text are by Mai Nguyên Anh and are reproduced here with his permission.