Vinh Thành

2014 - 2016    Master of Fine Art, AKV|St.Joost, ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands
2007 - 2011    Bachelor of Fine Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.
2011 - 2014    Drawing Lecturer, Industry Design Department, Hoa Binh University, Hanoi, Vietnam
2011                Guest Lecturer, Fine Arts Department, Hanoi Architectural University, Hanoi, Vietnam
July 2009       Ho Chi Minh Trail project, 2-month residency, Long March Project, Long March Space, Beijing, China.

I work with a wide range of media such as drawing, painting, installation and performance. My work revolves around fictitious characters and their stories, often inspired by the social and cultural context of Vietnam. Beginning with diving into Vietnam’s history and its rich heritage or with collecting stories from daily life, I build up detailed biographies of invented characters and material evidence of their obsessive lives and work. This results in site-specific, unsettling environments in domestic dwellings and art spaces.

The spectators form their own interpretations of the invented characters by piecing together the clues and content they get from the artefacts and through introductions to the work. I don’t often immediately reveal that my works are contemporary artworks because I am interested in the fragile boundary between fiction and reality. The experience of the work could be described as ‘reading a story in three dimensions’.

I was born in 1988 in Hanoi, Vietnam and earned my Bachelor of Fine Art from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China in 2011. In 2004 I came to the Netherlands for the Master of Fine Art at AKV|St.Joost in ’s-Hertogenbosch. Travelling and studying abroad has given me the opportunity to reflect on my own background and on contemporary life in Vietnam within the context of globalization. Today Vietnam is a hybrid society and culture, with the traditional on the one hand and the rapid change of globalization and mass media on the other. My work is about how to connect these two aspects of contemporary Vietnam in the present and bring them into the future.

www.thanh-vinh.com