UuDam Tran Nguyen
UuDam (b.1977, Vietnam) briefly attended the University of Fine Art in HCMC. He graduated from UCLA in 2001 and got his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2005.
Ưu Đàm created a huge scale artwork involving hundreds of motorcycles that pump inflatable sculptures, the Internet robotic crowdsourcing LICENSE 2 DRAW app/installation that enable people from anywhere in the world to draw on one canvas placed ten thousands of kilometers away from them. He also does global travel sculpture/performances, expanding the definition of studio sculpture practice. Ưu Đàm ’s videos Serpents’ Tails address the rapid development of Vietnam with a prophetic message. His on-going multi-phased Time Boomerang puts a fresh look on the South East Asia current geopolitics situation and expands on it millions of years into the future and the past. Working creatively with video, performance, photography, sculpture, technology and new media, Ưu Đàm ’s thought-provoking art practice is unique in the Vietnamese contemporary art scene today. He won the Jury Selection Prize of the prestigious Japan Media Art Festival 2015. Ưu Đàm is also a cofounder of the collective XEM artist book in Saigon.
Studio Visit with UuDam
Tuyen Nguyen and Quynh Nguyen, founders of Nguyen Art Foundation, and Thy Nguyen, Project Manager of Nguyen Art Foundation, visited Ưu Đàm on 17 April 2021. Ưu Đàm shares how his art career started, the different experiences he gained from the Vietnamese and American educational systems, the reason for his return to Vietnam, and the development of his works with mediums. He also discusses some of his projects like Serpents’ Tails, Eco-Đi, Technophobe, and Time Boomerang.
This video is part of a series of interviews with artists in the Nguyen Art Foundation collection