Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnamese visual artist Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai has been named the winner of the Artist Excellence Award by The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre.
Along with a cash prize of 160 million VND (around 7,000 USD), Mai will also have her own exhibition.
The award aims to honour Vietnamese artists (including overseas Vietnamese) who are creative and have outstanding contributions to the local community.
Mai, born in 1982 and residing in Hue city of the central province of Thua Thien-Hue, holds a MA degree in Visual Arts of Mahasarakham University, Thailand. She has been working as a lecturer at the Hue College of Arts under the Hue University for almost 15 years.
Mai has received sponsorship from the Australian War Memorial Museum to develop her research in 2018. Her works have been exhibited in exhibitions in many countries including Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Indonesia.
In 2014, she received an award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She organised her own exhibitions in Cambodia in 2015 and Germany and Croatia in 2016.
According to Mai, who owns a rich treasure of works in various kinds such as fine arts, photography, sculpture and performance, art is a tool for her to observe and understand herself. She has visualised her questions and imaginations on the history and the society.
She has expanded her exploration from women in Asia to many other issues such as those related to war veterans, migrants, and trans-gender./.