Nicole Tran Ba Vang is a plastic artist from Vietnamese descent. She lives and works in Paris.
She first established herself in the French contemporary photography landscape.
With fashion as a background, the artist designs “Collections”, as she names today each of her photographic series.
Using the visual language of fashion, she plays with the codes and mechanisms of this domain that she perfectly knows.
Her pictures question the worship of appearance and the identity issues it reveals. With a certain sense of humor and in a light-hearted way the artist scrutinizes this evasive and unavoidable phenomenon, socially as well as psychologically.
Nicole Tran Ba Vang rose to fame with paradoxical pictures in which she strips her models naked while dressing them up with a second skin, adorning them with strange “garments of...
Nicole Tran Ba Vang is a plastic artist from Vietnamese descent. She lives and works in Paris.
She first established herself in the French contemporary photography landscape.
With fashion as a background, the artist designs “Collections”, as she names today each of her photographic series.
Using the visual language of fashion, she plays with the codes and mechanisms of this domain that she perfectly knows.
Her pictures question the worship of appearance and the identity issues it reveals. With a certain sense of humor and in a light-hearted way the artist scrutinizes this evasive and unavoidable phenomenon, socially as well as psychologically.
Nicole Tran Ba Vang rose to fame with paradoxical pictures in which she strips her models naked while dressing them up with a second skin, adorning them with strange “garments of nudity”. These seductive yet unsettling images interfere with the perception of our most immutable feature – our skin – by accessorizing it like an interchangeable item of the perfect wardrobe.
Nicole Tran Ba Vang describes what is at stake in her work with the pun “Etre ou ne paraître” (French for “To be or not to appear”).
Since 2003 she extends her thoughts on identity with her photographic series: the skin of chameleon-women is embroidered, connecting their flesh to the delicate patterns of the walls, in which they seem to blend.
In her “Fall/Winter 2007/08 Collection”, characters are embroidered and trapped in the patterns on the walls. Thus intensifying the ambiguous duality between reality and fiction. The artist expands her research on the connection between body and setting, between the individual and their environment. These photographs are embedded in an installation with embroidered walls, hence creating wall-embroideries.
Nicole Tran Ba Vang signed her first work for live performing arts with the creation of stage design and costumes for Eldorado (Sonntags Abschied).
In her recent series “You Will Never Die” the artist presents an ensemble that casts a new light on the great legends of western art. Pieces like "Head of Aphrodite of the Capitol type" (150 BC, Paris, Musée du Louvre), "The Arnolfini Portait" by Jan Van Eyck (1434, London, National Gallery), "Portrait of a Young Girl" by Petrus Christus (1470, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie), the "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci (1503-1506, Paris, Musée du Louvre), the "Madonna of the Pinks" (1506-1507, London, National Gallery) and "La fornarina" by Raphael (1518-1519, Rome, Palazzo Barberini), "Salome" by Titian (1515, Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj), the "Self-portrait in a Straw Hat" (1782, London, National Gallery) and the "Portrait of Marie-Antoinette" (1783, Versailles, Musée national du château) by Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun have received institutional and popular acclaim for their esthetic qualities and the savoir-faire of their creators, thus inspiring artists for centuries. A legacy and a mise en abyme claimed by Nicole Tran Ba Vang who has put together her own personal museum of portraits, goddesses and biblical figures. These canonical models of academic genre refer not only to the history of ancient art but also to the numerous misappropriations practiced in the XXth century by Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol or more recently by Cindy Sherman and the Chapman Brothers.
Collections :
- Collection Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Autriche
- Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Etats-Unis
- Collection Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint Etienne
- Collection Neuflize Vie/ABN AMRO, Paris
- Collection Sylvio Perlstein
- Collection Musée Louis Vuitton, Paris