Art Labor including Thao Nguyen Phan, Truong Cong Tung & Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran is an artist collective based in Ho Chi Minh City, who work in between visual arts, social and life sciences in various public contexts and locales. We do not produce single artwork but develop many-year-long journey during which one inspiration is a seed to cultivate. The seed grows – the inspiration expands and bears into rhizome of projects and artworks.
Their previous journeys include Unconditional Belief (2012-2015), Jrai Dew (2016-ongoing) and JUA (2019-ongoing)
They have been exhibited widely in Vietnam and international, notably such as Paradise Kortrijk, Triennial for contemporary art, Belgium (2021);Carnegie International 57th, Bangkok Art Biennale, ‘A beast, a god, and a line’ at Dhaka Art Summit, Para Site and Modern Art in Warsaw (2018); Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Asian Art Biennial, Taiwan; ‘Salt of the Jungle’ at KF Gallery, Korea, (2017); Jrai Dew Sculpture Garden in Central Highlands of Vietnam (2016-17); The Adventure of Color Wheel at Pediatrics Department, Eye Hospital HCMC (2015); Unconditional Belief at Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City (2014).
Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, art laborer
Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran is an art laborer based in Saigon, recognized for her individual and collective artistic practices, as well as her curatorial and writing contributions. Her artworks combine political discourse with science fiction aesthetics, employing mediums such as animation, 3D design, historical archives, and architecture. Arlette is particularly engaged with the concept of a futuristic Third World utopia in which political ideals are reimagined, allowing for the coexistence and integration of human and non-human entities. Through her work, she presents a non-linear and absurd interpretation of modern histories that critically interrogates dominant post-Cold War narratives concerning the Third World.
She is Fellow of the Art in Networks: GDR and its Global Relations Fellowship at the Institut für Kunst- und Musikwissenschaft, TU Dresden, the 2022 Margaret F. Williams Memorial Fellowship at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the Asian Cultural Council’s New York Fellowship Program.
Arlette’s works have been featured in notable venues, including the nGbK Berlin, Prospect New Orleans, Lagos Biennial 2024, Albertinum Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, Canal Projects, Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, and the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul.
Thao Nguyen Phan, artist
Thao Nguyen Phan ( Phan Thảo Nguyên)
Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Trained as a painter, Phan is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses video, painting and installation. Drawing from literature, philosophy and daily life, Phan observes ambiguous issues in social conventions and history. She started working in film when she began her MFA in Chicago. Phan exhibits internationally, with solo and group exhibitions including Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France, 2025), Pirelli HangarBiccoca (Milan, Italy, 2023); Venice Art Biennial (Venice, Italy, 2022); Tate St Ives, (Cornwall, UK, 2022); Chisenhale gallery (London, 2020); WIELS (Brussels, 2020); Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2019); Lyon Biennale (Lyon, 2019); Sharjah Biennial (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2019); Dhaka Art Summit (2018); Para Site (Hong Kong, 2018); Factory Contemporary Art Centre (Ho Chi Minh City, 2017); Nha San Collective (Hanoi, 2017); and Bétonsalon (Paris, 2016), among others.
She was shortlisted for the 2019 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award and she was granted the Han Nefkens Foundation-LOOP Barcelona Video Art Production Award 2018, in collaboration with Fundaciò Joan Miró. In addition to her work as a multimedia artist, she is co-founder of the collective Art Labor, which explores cross disciplinary practices and develops art projects that benefit the local community. Thao Nguyen Phan is expanding her “theatrical fields”, including what she calls performance gesture and moving images. Phan is a 2016-2017 Rolex Protégée, mentored by internationally acclaimed, New York-based, performance and video artist, Joan Jonas.
Truong Cong Tung, artist
Truong Cong Tung grew up in Dak Lak among various ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. He graduated from the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2010, majoring in lacquer painting. With research interests in science, cosmology and philosophy and the environment, he works with a range of media, including video, installation, painting and found objects, which reflect personal contemplations on the cultural and geopolitical shifts of modernization, as embodied in the morphing ecology, belief or mythology of a land. He is also a member of Art Labor (founded in 2012), a collective working between visual art and social/life sciences to produce alternative non-formal knowledge via artistic and cultural activities in various public contexts and locales.
Truong Cong Tung has exhibited extensively in Vietnam and abroad as a solo artist and as part of Art Labor Collective. Select recent exhibitions include, “Is it morning for you yet?” 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, USA (2022), “State of Absence…Words out there. A collaborative installation by plants, insects, earth, water, ash, air... and Trương Công Tùng, Manzi Art Space, Hanoi, Vietnam (2021), “The Sap still runs” (2019), San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok Biennale (2018), “Between Fragmentation and Wholeness” at Galerie Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City (2018), “A Beast, a God, and a Line” at Para Site, Hong Kong (2018) and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018), Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2018), Cosmopolis, Collective Intelligence, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), “Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs” at Para Site, Hong Kong (2017) and Kadist, San Francisco (2016), “Across the Forest,” an installation for Project Skylines with Flying People 3 at Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi (2016), and “Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future” at Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2016).