Reception: Saturday, 7 February, 4-7pm

On view through 8 March; closure 14 February to 22 February, 2026

Hours: 10:00 - 18:00 daily; registration highly encouraged

Registration link: https://forms.gle/fpceoTY3KYDNenCj6

Location: VAC Hanoi, 6/44/11 To Ngoc Van, Tay Ho, Hanoi

Vietnam Art Collection (VAC) is pleased to present the Open Studio of Spring 2026 artists-in-residence Anh-Phuong Nguyen (AP Nguyen) and Thuy-Anh Dang. Developed during their time at VAC Hanoi, the open studio offers a glimpse into newly developed works and ongoing artistic inquiries, and marks the culmination of their residency.

AP Nguyen - “Pleasure!”

AP Nguyen presents “Pleasure!”, a new body of sculptural works developed during her residency, exploring the tension and drama inherent in surfaces alongside recurring obsessions with kitsch, replicas, and cultural clichés. Working through an improvisational and additive process, Nguyen draws subject matter and inspiration from an expansive cache that includes the Cocteau Twins’ indecipherable song lyrics, contemporary tourism research journals, the architecture of faux neoclassical Vietnamese shopping malls, and assemblages of objects found on the streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter. These seemingly unrelated elements collide within her practice in an act akin to miniature landscaping, articulating a deeply personal sensitivity to the material world and the materiality of things. Through acts of tampering, reproduction, and juxtaposition, Nguyen oscillates between the authentic and the manufactured—probing the boundaries between the prosaic and the poetic, the real and the fake, the desirable and the distasteful—allowing space for the weird and the strange to emerge.

Thuy-Anh Dang - “An end that never arrives”

In a parallel space, Thuy-Anh Dang presents "An end that never arrives", an open studio that borrows its title from a poem by Xuan Quynh (1942-1988) and reflects on states of nauseating anxiety, suspended anticipation, and unresolved progression. Spanning across different forms of sculpture, painting, and video, Thuy-Anh's works emerge from her ongoing research about performative elements that persist beyond performance itself. The practice of pushing the body to its limit, using minimal mechanical repetition is now implemented on living organisms such as yeast, bacteria, lacquer paint, and milk powder. Chance, deviation, and material agency are embraced, allowing unfamiliarized progress to unfold within intimate and suffocated spaces. Here, the performance lies beyond immediate action, but transformation, cyclical and quiet progression.

Collaborative Work with Guest Artist Lai Dieu Ha - “White - Soft - Tense”

With a shared interest in the “afterlife” of a performance, Thuy-Anh extended an invitation to her residency at VAC to Hanoi-based artist Lai Dieu Ha. Both artists, though two generations apart, consistently practise archiving, re-activating, and transforming their works, as well as works by other artists, into other forms of existence. Their collaborative process is open-ended; one works in tandem with the other, while not necessarily being physically present at the same time. Working together on a large surface, where their conversation takes place, the two artists respond to and develop works that derive from their archives. Their collaboration could be pinned down by three keywords: White - Soft - Tense.

A performance by Thuy-Anh Dang and Lai Dieu Ha will take place on February 27, 2026. Further details will be announced via VAC’s channels.

About the artists-in-residence

Anh-Phuong Nguyen (AP Nguyen) (b.1999) is a multidisciplinary artist based in London, working between the UK and Vietnam. Her practice is informed by contemporary material cultures and systems of production, circulation, and display. Often drawing from contexts within hospitality and tourism, she is interested in how narratives of desire, fantasy, and value are constructed and maintained, and how objects accrue meaning within broader social and economic frameworks. Recent solo exhibition: “Lovecore”, Hanoi (2021). Selected group exhibitions include: “A Landscape of Chance”, SLQS Gallery, London (2024), “Means of Production”, Sheerly Touch-Ya and Shisanwu LLC Warehouse, New York (2024), “Beauty Tech Art Spa”, Cornershop London (2023), “Dentro”, Somers Gallery, London (2023), “No Place Like Home Part II” (A Vietnamese Exhibition), Museum of the Home, London (2023), “Baggage Claim”, Staffordshire St, London (2023), “Cursed Images”, Kawaii Agency (2023), “APT Introduces: Anh-Phuong Nguyen & Stanley Tilyard-French”, APT Gallery (June 2024). Nguyen is the 2023 recipient of the APT x Fenton Arts Trust Mentoring Award.

Thuy-Anh Dang (b.1996) is a visual artist currently living and working in Hanoi. She graduated from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts in 2019, majoring in Graphic Design. Since 2017, Thùy Anh has engaged more frequently in experimental artistic practice through various performance art events and explored different mediums such as installation, photography, and conceptual approaches to art making. Her interests revolve around the connection between humans and nature, visual motifs that are stereotypically understood, and the impact of social prejudice on the conceptualization of gender. Thùy Anh often uses living organisms, natural resources, her own body, and her personal archives as materials in her art. She was awarded the “Finest Artist Award 2022–2023” by Hanoi Grapevine and received the Dogma Prize in 2023. In 2024, she became a member of the Curatorial Board at Á Space – An Experimental Art Space. Her solo exhibitions include: “Silent Intimacy” (The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, 2019) and “Chợt Mộng Tan” (Á Space, Hanoi, 2022). Selected group exhibitions and performance art festivals include: “Forgotten Specimen” (Spinnerei, Leipzig, Germany, 2024), “Nostalgia for the Future” (Children’s Palace, Hanoi, 2024), “Level 13A” (InterContinental, Thailand, 2024), “Koganecho Bazaar” (Yokohama, Japan, 2024), “Cement Park Festival” (Shanghai, 2023), “Assemblage: Me, my story and I” (Dogma, Ho Chi Minh City, 2023), “Swallow & Spit 1 & 2” (A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur, 2023), “Tái Nạm” (Mơ Art Space, Hanoi, 2022), “Sáng – Trưa – Chiều – Tối” (Á Space, Hanoi, 2022), “Month of Art Practice – MAP” (Heritage Space, Hanoi, 2018), “NIPAF Festival / IN:ACT” (Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi, 2017, 2019, 2022), “MoT Plus Performance Festival” (MoT Plus, Ho Chi Minh City, 2019), “Wu Wei Performance” (Coda Culture, Singapore, 2020), “Open Studio I, II & III” (Á Space, Hanoi, 2018), and “Emerging Artists 6” (Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi, 2018).

About the guest artist

Lai Dieu Ha (b.1976) was born into a family with an artistic tradition in Thai Nguyen and graduated from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts in 2005. She is recognized as one of Vietnam's leading performance artists, with a multifaceted and deeply haunting practice. In her early period, Lai Dieu Ha primarily worked with performance art, using her own body as both subject of research and site of practice - simultaneously a space for experimentation, self-questioning, and self-challenge, as well as a point of provocation inviting audiences to confront themselves and formulate their own responses. Her works delve into psychological traces, the boundaries of pain, social constraints imposed on the female body, and the potentials of the human body. Alongside performance, she works with painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. From around 2017, Lai Dieu Ha returned to painting as a parallel practice, recreating her previous performances and using painting as a form of observation, archiving, and extending the life of her past artistic practices. Her notable exhibitions include: "Inter-weaving Perspectives" (The Outpost, Hanoi, 2024); "Conservation of Vitality" (Cuc Gallery, Hanoi, 2015); "Mind - Flesh - Matter" (San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, 2014); "Psychodrama Therapy" at the Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival (Chicago, USA, 2014).