Tran Nu YenKhe

Working across sculpture, painting and cinema, Paris-based artist Tran Nu YênKhê creates worlds where light and shadow engage in a subtle dance and tensions between form and material play out. YênKhê’s work doesn’t strive to represent or recreate specific imagery but rather the dynamic, abstract forms elicit a range of emotions and imagined narratives in a poetic language that underscore the complexity and contradictions of human behavior.

 

YênKhê studied at the prestigious École Camondo, a private school of product design and interior architecture in Paris. The artist’s Borderline (2018), a striking sculpture made of traditional Vietnamese lacquer, was acquired in 2019 by Musée Guimet in Paris making history as the first contemporary artwork from Southeast Asia to be included in the French National Collections. Alongside her visual art practice, YênKhê has built a distinguished career in film over the last 30 years as the lead actress in Scent of Green Papaya (1993), Cyclo (1995), and The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000), among others and recently served as Art Director and Costume Designer for The Taste of Things (2023), directed by Tran Anh Hung — winner of the Best Director Award at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.