Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran

Lives and works in Germany | Born 1987
Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran is an art laborer based in Saigon. She creates art both collectively and individually and also curates and writes. Her artworks combine politics and sci-fi aesthetics through the use of animation, 3D design, historical archives, and architecture. Arlette is fascinated by the idea of a futuristic Third World utopia where political ideals are reimagined, and humans and non-human beings coexist and merge. She presents a non-linear and absurd interpretation of modern histories that challenges the dominant post-Cold War narratives about the Third World.

Recent solo shows include PLATTENLOTUS, station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf, Berlin (2025), and iii.x_Unrealized Utopia, at Gallery Medium, Saigon (2024).
Curriculum Vitae
Education
2019 - 2022 MA - Aesthetics & Politics, California Institute of the Arts, US
2009 - 2013 BA - Art History and Philosophy, Freie Universitat Berlin, Humboldt University, University Greifswald, Germany & Charles University in Prague, Czech
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025 PLATTENLOTUS, station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf, Berlin, Germany
2024 iii.x_Unrealized Utopia, Gallery Medium, Saigon, Vietnam
Selected Groups Exhibitions
2025 Art Jakarta 2025, ara contemporary, Jakarta, Indonesia
The Utopia of Rules, TWorks, Singapore
Bảy nổi ba chìm – Seven up Three down, Hessel Museum of Art, New York, US
Official Selection of the International Film Festival Rotterdam & Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany
2024 REFUGE, Lagos Biennial 2024, Nigeria
Dream Screen, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
Cloud Chamber, Para Site, Hong Kong
the future is present, the harbinger is home, Prospect New Orleans 6, US
2023 Revolutionary Romances. Transkulturelle Kunstgeschichten in der DDR: Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany
2022 Posthuman: Story Telling for Earthly Survival, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea
2018 A beast, a god, and a line , Dhaka Art Summit '18, Dhaka, with Art Labor Collective
Carnegie International 57th ed.,, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, with Art Labor Collective
2017 Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence, Centre Pompidou Paris, with Art Labor Collective
Asian Art Biennale, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, with Art Labor Collective
2015 Color Wheel's Journey, Permanent Public Art Project, HCMC Eye Hospital, with Art Labor Collective
2014 Haunted Threshold, Gottingen Kunstverein, with Art Labor Collective
2010 Syntax and Diction, Sàn Art, Saigon, Vietnam
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Residencies
2026 Art Explora - Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France
2022 Artist-in-residence at the Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea
Collections
Nguyen Art Foundation, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Selected Award & Prizes
2025 Asian Cultural Council’s New York Fellowship Program
2023 Teiger Foundation Research Grant
2022 Art in Networks: GDR and its Global Relations Fellowship, Institut für Kunst- und Musikwissenschaft, TU Dresden
Margaret F. Williams Memorial Fellow at the Asian Art Museum San Francisco
Selected Publications
2022 Nha San Collective's archive publication
Midnight Sun and the Owl, Asian Art Biennial 2021 anthology
Thai Nguyen Phan, Tate St. Ives monograph
2021 Whisper-wails, Village Festivals, and Bolero - Funeral Rites, nusasonic
Selected Works

On the left window: The brightest open hand

2025, LED Lamps, electric wires, 90 x 110 cm

Sharing one root, why torn apart?

2025, joss paper, wire, book-binding tape, stainless steel, construction clay, variable dimensions

Sharing one root, why torn apart?

2025, joss paper, wire, book-binding tape, stainless steel, construction clay, variable dimensions

The Unrealized Utopia | TUU–Schlemmer

2023, ink, gouache, charcoal, silkscreen, tracing paper on republished Bauhaus Journal mounted on aluminum, 89 x 93 cm

The Unrealized Utopia | TUU– Niemeyer

2023, ink, gouache, charcoal, silkscreen, tracing paper on republished Bauhaus Journal mounted on aluminum, 50,5 x 59,5 cm

The Unrealized Utopia | TUU–Kandinsky

2023, ink, gouache, charcoal, silkscreen, tracing paper on republished Bauhaus Journal mounted on aluminum, 168 x 89 cm

Exhibition