Meet the artists | Ngoc Nau


Our ‘Meet the artists’ series presents contemporary creatives shaping today’s cultural landscape

Ngoc Nau grapples with a culture in flux. Identity, memory, and heritage form the thematic core of the emerging Vietnamese artist’s installations and AR films. In this episode of ‘Meet the artists’, we visit Nau in her studio – a room in a former factory on Hanoi’s outskirts – and wander the surrounding industry-wasted landscape as she reflects on the ways technology has become an omnipresent force in our lives.

During our visit, Nau also introduces us to the local folk tradition Đạo Mẫu, the worship of the Mother Goddess of the Three Realms. ‘Among those who worship the Mother Goddess are workers in the coal mining industry,’ she explains. ‘The ritual is a way for them to give back the fortune and financial gains extracted from nature.’

Nau’s video installation, Virtual Reverie: Echoes of a Forgotten Utopia, is part of the 'Passages' exhibition at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore through January 28, 2024.

Ngoc Nau is represented by Vin Gallery (Ho Chi Minh City).

Director: Ostin Fam
Camera: Ha Hoang
Sound: Huy Luong
Focus: Huy Phung
PA: Quang Quang
Edit: Linh DN
Sound Post: Sigon Sound

Art Basel
Executive Editor: Coline Milliard
Senior Editor: Alicia Reuter
Video Commissioner: Jeanne-Salomé Rochat
Creative Producer: Akiel Gallina


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