This exhibition is Thao Nguyen Phan’s (1987) first monograph in France. The artist presents a selection of recent or newly produced works (videos, paintings, sculptures), focusing on various historical figures linking France and Vietnam. This is an opportunity to develop a polyphony of views on her country and its history, its past and present ghosts. As a counterpoint, the artist Truong Cong Tung (1986) shows two site-specific works.

Thao Nguyen Phan produces a new body of work in connection with the missionary Jacques Dournes (1922-1993), who published numerous works as a theologian and ethnologist specialising in South-East Asia and societies with an oral tradition. The exhibition also features a series of watercolours inspired by the Jesuit priest Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660). One of the first Europeans to travel through Cochinchina and Tonkin, he is famous for being a major contributor for devising the first phonetic and romanised transcription of the Vietnamese language.

An important part of the exhibition consists of a dialogue between the work of Thao Nguyen Phan and that of Diem Phung Thi (1920-2002), to whom she began to pay tribute with “Reincarnations of Shadows” (Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2024). The practice of this modernist artist, who lived in France for several decades, was multi-faceted (painting, sculpture, furniture, jewelry, etc.), culminating in the creation of an alphabet of seven modular forms assembled in a number of variations.

This invitation is part of an ongoing relationship with Thao Nguyen Phan: her work was presented at the 15th Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale, “Where Water Comes Together with Other Water”, in 2019 – on the initiative of the Palais de Tokyo’s curatorial team, which was in charge of its artistic direction.