Born 1983, Nam Dinh
BFA (2012), MFA (2015), Vietnam Fine Arts University
Before attending art school, Mai Đại Lưu worked various jobs, including guarding motorbikes at cafés. His practice reflects both physical and mental resilience, shaped by years of labor undertaken to support his education. While many of his contemporaries began to gain recognition, Lưu continued to paint with determination and focus. In recent years, he has maintained a steady rhythm of solo exhibitions every two years, each presenting large-scale paintings that attest to his stamina and persistence.
Luu often paints in a highly colorful, sensual manner, expressing desires for connection, for bodies, and for what might be called the erotic fullness of life. There is always a presence of intimacy and sexuality in his work, a persistent male-female longing. Even behind the flowers he paints, one often glimpses the outline of a lover, or a suggestion of romance. Amidst nature and the radiant beauty of life, romantic love is never absent. His practice, existing at the intersection of autobiography and Vietnamese history, explores how certain yearnings, spiritual desires, and beliefs are projected onto natural elements, flowers, fields, the landscape itself, as extensions of memory and emotional life. With references to Vietnamese history, Luu’s expansive body of work channels a kind of solar energy, both within the human body and the larger structures of the world.
He has exhibited widely across Vietnam and Southeast Asia, his work is included in both public and private collections, notably the Imago Mundi Collection in Italy.