Ngo Dinh Bao Chau

Biography

Ngo Dinh Bao Chau’s practice challenges the dualisms and tensions that exist in contemporary society and the natural world. Incorporating a wide range of materials from sedge mats, steel, and concrete, to trúc chỉ—paper made from the purées of bamboo, corn and duckweed, the artist creates labour-intensive multimedia installations that require years of research and production. One of Bao Chau’s seminal projects included appropriated symbols belonging to a collective, cultural memory and placed in an imagined homespace, foregrounding the power of repetition and collapsing the distinction between public and private space. In her most recent work, Bao Chau reimagines the house as a pulsating, sensorial organism entangled in a complex ecology with our evolving world.

Born in 1986 in Dong Thap and educated at the Ho Chi Minh University of Fine Arts, Ngo Dinh Bao Chau has held numerous exhibitions within Asia and abroad, including Half a day continues | That day, I was preparing to go out then it rained, organized by Sao La, 1/2 Gallery, Dalat; Towards Realist Socialization, curated by Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City; Silk of light, Sàn Art Productions x Phuong My, Ho Chi Minh City; Nothing Special That Day–An Exit, University of the Arts Bremen, Bremen, Germany and Gia Lam Train Factory, Hanoi; Vietnam in Transition, 1976–Present, Wende Museum, Culver City, CA, USA; No Cai Bum: The Dreaming Dalat, Dalat; No Cai Bum, Hue; Am I Superwoman?, Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City; Block of Silence, SECC, Ho Chi Minh City; Where The Sea Remembers, The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Bodies Survey(ed), Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City; She, organized by Sao La, Địa Projects, Ho Chi Minh City, travelled to Sweet ‘Art, London, UK and Little Pink Monster Gallery, TX, USA; Body Bouquet, Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries, Atlanta, GA, USA; Out of Nowhere, Sao La, Ho Chi Minh City; and My eldest sister – Part 2: Eldest sister, Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City.

In 2025, Bao Chau was shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong. In 2018, she was selected for the apexart Fellowship in New York, USA, and in 2010 undertook the 943 Studio arts residency in Kunming, China. In 2016, she received a grant from the Denmark-Vietnam Cultural Development and Exchange Fund for Open Room—an open studio event with artists Cam Xanh, Lap-Xuan N. Do, Kim Duy, and Dao Tung.

Ngo Dinh Bao Chau lives and works between Hue and Ho Chi Minh City.

Works