THE H STUDIO

about the host

Nguyen Thuy Hang (b. 1978, Saigon, Vietnam) graduated from the HCMC University of Fine Arts. Her works often combine various art forms: large-scale sculptural installation and contemporary dance, cinema, fine arts, and music. She is one of the most outstanding artists from the post-war generation, both in the fields of literature and visual arts in Vietnam. Her first trilogy, Current Times, Good Sensations, and Reasonable Insanity, written during a two-year adventure in the US, was published by Knowledge Publisher and Young Publisher, Hanoi, 2006, and became a phenomenon in the country.

Despite growing up and sharing the common experience of post-war Vietnam with others in her generation, Nguyen Thuy Hang nonetheless remains peerless in her practice. She hones her skills as an ambidextrous player in both literature and the visual arts, balancing herself on a tightrope as she gives her whole heart and mind to both forms of expression. Her paintings and sculptures exalt sentiments already imbued in her writing, and her short stories generate imaginative spaces where her visual arts can take on more cryptic and phantasmagorical shapes through text. Drawing from her wealth of experiences from seemingly incongruous milieux — educated at the Fine Arts University of the South, living and practicing for a few years in the US, then advancing her career in the North, before returning to HCMC — Nguyen Thuy Hang diverges from the predominant style of socialist realism in Vietnam and tackles hidden taboos in a society still reeling and healing from past wounds.

Her literary publications have appeared in prestigious journals including Kill Your Darlings (Australia), diaCRITIC (USA), Vagabond Press (Australia), and Han Nefkens Foundation (Spain), and are held in the collection of the Hong Kong Library Museum–Taiwan Contemporary Art Museum. She has held numerous exhibitions and art talks at home and internationally, including: In absence, presence, Nguyen Art Foundation, HCMC, 2024; Land(e)scape, Galerie BAQ, Paris, 2023; My Life as a Fictional Story, KB Art House, Simrishamn, Sweden, 2019; Dew Drips, Smog Sips, Vin Gallery, HCMC, 2019; Histoire d'un Voyage: sand in my ears, adrift with the world, The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, HCMC, 2017; On the stream, The Third Kunming Art Biennale, Yunnan Fine Arts Museum, China, 2016; The Warriors, sculpture installation, Post Vidai, Saigon, 2015. Her works have been collected by private collectors both domestically and internationally. She is currently working in HCMC, Vietnam.

about the space

If you're looking for a space with touches of Western 1960s style blended with 1970s Saigon — modern city life just outside the windows, and a gentle slowdown within — surrounded by contemporary works including oil paintings, pencil drawings, sculpture, and literature, this is the place for you. The studio also houses a small vinyl record collection and hundreds of CDs, along with a projector, so you can enjoy and create while you're here.

Most of the furniture has been preserved from family, characteristic of Saigon in the 1970s — pieces I've lived with since I was born in this city, many over 50 years old. Even some of the cups and plates you'll use have been here for half a century. This is what gives the space the character of THE H STUDIO.

collaboration

Exchange of ideas around writing, painting, and sculpture — or combining multiple disciplines / mixed media.

practical

house rules

Please close balcony doors and windows when going out — cat safety. Quiet hours after 10pm.

languages

Vietnamese, English

transport

Bus stop right at the entrance

nearby

Pharmacy, market, supermarket, hospital, café, restaurants, bookstore, river and lake access, gym

smoking

yes — Allowed in studio and living room; not in bedroom

guests

yes — Work-related guests welcome