Nguyen Thi Giang

Biography

Nguyen Thi Giang is one of the top woman artist in Vietnamese contemporary art. Nguyen Thi Giang was born in Hanoi, Vietnam in 1975. She graduated from Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts and was named one of the top ten “Young Artists” of Ho Chi Minh City in 1997.

Nguyen Thi  Giang incorporates a variety of media on her canvases and often uses self-portraiture at the core of her Vietnamese contemporary art work. Nguyen Thi  Giang has been compared to the late Spanish artist Frida Kahlo for her self-portraits depicting important events in her life. She is one of the few women Vietnamese contemporary artists who challenge the stereotypes and traditional roles of women in Vietnamese society. Her surreal portraits capture the varied and complex notions of feminine identities in contemporary Vietnam society, allowing the intensity of the subject’s gaze to confront and articulate their strength, anxiety or struggle. Fascinated by the idea of a “woman’s beauty”, Nguyen Thi Giang’s oil paintings delves deep to understand the nature of a woman’s spirit through her artistic exploration.

Multi-talented Giang is also an accomplished writer who has published two volumes of short stories and novels as well as four screenplays.

Awards:
Nguyen Thi Giang was named one of the top ten “Young Artists” of Ho Chi Minh City in 1997 and was awarded First Prize in the Young Artist Concourse organised by the French Embassy and the Vietnamese Fine Art Association in 2001.

International Exhibitions:
Nguyen Thi  Giang has held several solo Contemporary Vietnamese art exhibitions in Hanoi and Japan as well as participated in group shows in the United States, United Kingdom, Korea, Thailand as well as in Singapore. One of her prominent exhibitions was “Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women Artists in Vietnam” which featured a collection of 50 artworks from 10 Vietnamese women artists that travelled through major cities in the US from 2007 to 2008.

Museum / Private Collections:
Nguyen Thi  Giang’s contemporary Vietnamese art works can be found in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, The Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, Texas USA and the Singapore Art Museum.