Minh Dung Vu doesn’t just paint; he works with fabric in a way that feels collaborative. Silk, linen, and canvas shape the work as much as he does. His practice moves between intention and material, grounded in geographical displacement, memory, and culture. Born in Vietnam and moving to Germany in 2013, Dũng began exploring how composition responds to the fluidity of space. Through cutting, sewing, and assembling fabric, he builds a tactile connection to the past. His work doesn’t depict tradition directly. Instead, it offers another way of engaging with it—through process, through form. The softness and permeability of his materials allow shapes and spaces to emerge gradually. Drawing on culture and history, his work reflects memory, personal experience, and family stories. Traditional Vietnamese forms like chầu văn and ca trù, along with feelings of homesickness and unfamiliarity, shape the foundation of his visual language.
Minh Dung Vu was born in Quảng Ninh, Vietnam, in 1995 and is now based in Leipzig, Germany. He received his B.F.A. from the University of Fine Arts in Essen and his M.F.A. from the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig under Michael Riedel. Following graduate school, Vu completed a postgraduate degree at the Academy of Fine Arts Mainz. Today, the artist divides his time between his Leipzig studio loft and his home in Munich. Vu’s work has been exhibited at Eli Klein Gallery, New York; the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig; Galerie Heike Strelow; and Biesenbach, Cologne, and is part of the permanent collection at the STRABAG Kunstforum in Vienna. He has been recognized with several awards, including: the Ketterer Kunst Masterclass Award nomination, the STRABAG International Art Recognition Award, the City of Essen Art Award, and the Federal Republic of Germany Scholarship for Art Students.