Installation View, SHE WHO MOVES, Vietnam Art Collection, Hanoi, 2025

Photo: Emma Feng

The room is breathing beneath a veil of silky blue curtains—dark, soft, intimate, and emotional—with only a projected canvas suspending in the middle of the air, resembling a living diary that both invites and resists people to read. The protagonist from the diary seems hesitant at the beginning of her journey, then turns self-determined, following a direction she never knows to be true or false. A silicone bodysuit, serving as a key clue in the film, materializes the invisible transformation process into a resilient, futuristic, and everyday embodiment. Silence—she never speaks—yet something mysteriously powerful drifts out of the screen that, at some point, finds resonance with the viewers—sensations that we might recognize from our experiences, but could never truly visualize: fleeting sensations that suspend, pierce through, and disappear. When enlarging these fleeting moments and senses, a woman has transformed. In this special context, what could we expect from her and from ourselves? It's not pleasure, but a complex mix of fears, pains, and hopes. One may expect to be understood, even to the smallest extent. Three framed silicone textile sculptures hang against the film screen, showing the footprints of these feminine transformations— aesthetic, resilient, and alienated, echoing to the film's theme through the form and texture while providing a larger imagination for the possible narratives.

Installation View, Soft Armor I-III, Vietnam Art Collection, Hanoi, 2025

Photo: Tran Tuyet Nga

I had a conversation with Tra My Nguyen one month before her open studio, SHE WHO MOVES, at VAC Hanoi.

"The film character has both ambiguity and an urge, like an energy inside her to go somewhere unknown. It can be scary, but she has this feeling she wants to try it out. She doesn't know exactly where, but she has this internal drive that she has to do it. She's doing her best, not forcing the outcome, but trying to enjoy the process and accept that she can expand herself along the way."

— Tra My Nguyen

To Nguyen, the film is a gateway to process her own experience of migration, displacement, memories, and identity. Having been born in Vietnam and then migrated to Germany at the age of seven, this unique combination of Vietnamese heritage and diasporic experience brings a textured yet emotional collaging lens to Nguyen. Starting from materiality, she initiates dialogues between Asian cultures and the globe.

"I have a deep connection through my mother, who owns a fashion store and is also interested in fashion and art. Growing up, I already had a sense of how I wanted to present myself and was interested in different materialities. I was naturally drawn to exploring how you express yourself through fashion. Through fashion, I could see art through magazines or pop culture, which made it more approachable than other art forms. My mother's influence gave me an early connection to materiality, aesthetics, and self-expression." — Tra My Nguyen

Graduated in 2019 with both bachelor's and master's degrees in fashion design, Nguyen found that her interests never stopped at merely decorating bodies, but shifted toward pushing the body beyond itself. She had already been thinking about her work in the sense of sculpture, experimenting with how to better express her ideas to audiences, combining other media including sound, light, smell, etc. Tra My expanded beyond fashion—still using the body as a core subject—but explored new ways to represent it.

using one's feet has become an option of last resort, 2019, fashion collection/wearables, Editiorial, look 1

Photo: Melanie Glück

Bodies II, & Bodies IV, 2019/2020

Installation view, Empathic Device, Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin, 2022

Photo: Gallery Tanja Wagner

Nguyen's work interrogates topics like body politics, beauty standards, gender roles, and commodification. Instead of making a binary statement—either conforming to or resisting social norms—Nguyen finds her approach through personal expression: sensitive, emotional, and vulnerable. Her work touches deeper parts that can resonate with people, inviting viewers to complete the work through personal feelings and reflections.

Regarding medium selection, Nguyen is particularly interested in everyday objects and materials that carry cultural significance. The motorbike, for instance, becomes more than just a consumer product—it's a symbol of mobility, connection, and personal narrative. She intentionally chooses materials like plastic sun-protective garments and silicone that blur boundaries between the digital and physical, the fragile and the functional, elevating the mundane to challenge how we perceive value.

Riders' Arc, 2024

Installation view, Fallen Angels, Grotto, Berlin, 2024

Photo: Grotto, Berlin

Nguyen's recent return to Hanoi for a three-month residency program became a catalyst for creating a work uniquely tied to the local environment.

"I wanted to create a work that I could only do here. The setting, the nature, the entire atmosphere of the country—I knew I could absorb it into a work. While I could create sculptures anywhere, this film is something that naturally emerged from being in Hanoi, capturing multiple languages of visual and sensory experience. It feels right to create something here that reflects the unique momentum of this moment and this place."— Tra My Nguyen

Photo: Tran Tuyet Nga

At the open studio, SHE WHO MOVES, Nguyen presents a film work (preview version) developed in and around Hanoi, along with three textile sculptures that interrogate the concepts of transformation, memories, and the ways in which bodies, images, and materials carry traces. The film follows the journey of a girl in transit, riding on a motorbike as a metaphor for becoming, moving somewhere both physically and spiritually. She discovers a silicone bodysuit, and upon wearing it, she appears transformed—faced with something she must confront and perhaps inhabit.

Behind the scenes from SHE WHO MOVES, photographed by Tran Thao Linh

Through SHE WHO MOVES, Nguyen not only traces her own path but opens up a shared space for viewers to reflect on their own.

The full-length of the film is scheduled to be on view in Berlin in December.

About The Artist

Tra My Nguyen is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, moving image, installation, and textiles. Her practice recontextualizes material culture through a diasporic lens, examining how the body intersects with power structures, memory, and histories of resilience and transformation. Through speculative narratives, she explores embodiment, alienation, and the layered complexities of becoming in a globalized world.

Tra My Nguyen

All images courtesy of the artist.