BARCELONA.- Thao Nguyen Phan is the winner of the Han Nefkens Foundation - Loop Barcelona Video Art Award 2018, in collaboration with the Fundació Joan Miró.

Thao Nguyen Phan’s wins the Han Nefkens Foundation - Loop Barcelona Video Art Award for her heterogeneous and powerful works, which have a uniquely poetic and beautiful form of storytelling.

Established by the Han Nefkens Foundation in collaboration with Loop Barcelona in 2018, the annual award aims to increase contemporary artistic production in the video art field by supporting artists of Asian origin or nationality.

Thao Nguyen Phan (1987, Vietnam) has unanimously been chosen as the winner of the Han Nefkens Foundation - LOOP Barcelona Video Art Award 2018 in collaboration with the Fundació Joan Miró.

Promising young artist Thao Nguyen Phan has a strong eye and, remarkably, for an artist of her age, she has found a voice that is both unique and incisive. Her diverse practice includes complex, layered narratives, which create a form of storytelling that is at once grounded in her local landscape and in the communities with whom she works, while at the same time referring back to fictional texts. She manages to blend the universal and the local in a poetic and visually powerful way. She is a great storyteller who executes her work in a highly professional manner. The jury feels that, at this moment in her career, Thao Nguyen Phan will be able to take full advantage of this opportunity by producing a new work that will without doubt further her career.

Thao Nguyen Phan receives $15.000 funding for the production of a new work which will be presented at the Fundació Joan Miró in November 2019 to coincide with Loop Barcelona 2019. The Han Nefkens Foundation will also present the work in various art centres worldwide throughout 2019 and 2020.

The winner has been selected by a judging panel chaired by Han Nefkens, Founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation, and joined by Emilio Álvarez, Founding co-director of LOOP Barcelona, Marko Daniel, Director of the Fundació Joan Miró, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of the Serpentine Galleries, and Barbara London, Associate Curator at MoMA.

Considered a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses painting, installation and ‘theatrical fields’, this also includes what Thao Nguyen Phan calls performance gesture and moving images. Through literature, philosophy and daily life, she observes ambiguous issues in social convention, history and tradition. Phan has exhibited in Vietnam and further afield, with solo and group exhibitions at Gemäldegalerie (Berlin, 2018), Dhaka Art Summit (2018), Para Site (Hong Kong, 2018), Factory Contemporary Art Centre (Ho Chi Minh City, 2017); Nha San Collective (Hanoi, 2017); Bétonsalon (Paris, 2016), among others. In addition to her work as a multimedia artist, she is co-founder of the collective, Art Labor, which explores cross disciplinary practices and develops art projects that benefit the local community.

Featuring artists from all over Asia, the nine shortlisted artists for the Han Nefkens Foundation - Loop Barcelona Video Art Award 2018 were: Mr. Chi-Yu Wu (1986, Taiwan), Ms. Yin-Ju Chen (1977, Taiwan), Ms. Sow-Yee AU (1978, Malaysia), Mr. Tzu Nyen Ho (1976, Singapore), Mr. Isaac Chong (1990, Hong Kong), Ms. Thao Nguyen Phan (1987, Vietnam), Mr. Chia-Wei Hsu (1983, Republic of China), Ms. Nao Yoshigai (1987, Japan) and Mr. Ping Wong (1984, Hong Kong).