DUONG THUY DUONG

Duong Thuy Duong (b. 1979, Hanoi, Vietnam) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Graduated from the University of Fine Arts and Design Burg Giebichenstein in Halle/Saale, she has developed a distinctive body of work centered on abstract self-portraits. Her paintings are often composed of tangled, expressive brushstrokes that appear to hover in a deep, dark space – a place where form and emotion collide, and the self seems to both emerge and dissolve.

Describing her practice as “non-self portrait painting”, Duong approaches portraiture not as representation, but as a process of introspection and transformation. Her works begin with her own sensations and memories, yet ultimately invite viewers to enter a shared psychological field, where they confront their reflections through abstraction.

Duong’s artistic journey has been shaped by an ongoing dialogue between inner and outer worlds — between her early years in Vietnam and her later life in Germany. She has held solo exhibitions in Vietnam, France, and Germany, including From Home to Park (Mo Art Space, Hanoi, 2025), Pretty as a Sheep (Galerie de Montpensier, Palais Royal, Paris, 2024), Agnes’s New Planets (Mo Art Space, Hanoi, 2022), and Where is Lucy (Kunsthof Alt Lietzow, Berlin, 2019). Her work has also been featured in notable group exhibitions such as Becoming Alice: Through the metal tunnel (The Outpost, Hanoi, 2024), Traversing Realms (Wiking Salon, Ho Chi Minh City, 2023), and Migration and Identity (Goethe-Institut, Hanoi, 2016).

Duong is a recipient of the “Neustart Kultur” scholarship by the Foundation Kunstfonds in Bonn, Germany (2022), and a postgraduate scholarship from the State of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany (2009). Her practice continues to evolve around the question of perception — how we see ourselves, and how the image we hold may shift, blur, or disappear in the act of looking.