Lêna Bùi
Biography
Lêna Bùi’s (b. 1985, Da Nang, Vietnam) practice unfolds through a sustained exploration of memory, materiality, and the porous relationship between the body and the surrounding world. Working across painting, photography, textile, and moving image, she understands the body not as a fixed entity but as a site of continual exchange – a vessel through which personal histories, ancestral memories, ecological processes, and emotional states intersect.
Drawing on her background in East Asian Studies and informed by anthropological inquiry, she investigates the impact of rapid urbanization on our relationship to nature and the unseen forces that structure everyday life. Working across media including silk painting, photography, tapestry, and video, she transforms lived experience and natural forms into atmospheric works that oscillate between representation and abstraction. Executed through her distinctive combination of silk painting and photographic imagery, the works evoke interconnected ecosystems in which plants, bodies, architectural forms, and elemental forces emerge and dissolve within shifting fields of colour, light, and perception.
Institutional exhibitions and screenings include the 15th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China (2025); HEK (House of Electronic Arts), Basel, Switzerland (2025); Bangkok Art Biennale, Thailand (2024); Nguyen Art Foundation, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2024); Delfina Foundation, London, UK (2023); Asian Film Archive, Singapore (2023); Jeju Biennale, South Korea (2022); Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2018); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2017).
Lêna Bùi lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025
skin in my stomach, Galerie Urs Meile Rämistrasse, Zurich, Switzerland
2024
Blue Filaments, Galerie BAQ , Paris, France
2018
Proliferation, Mansfield East Asian Center, Wesleyan University, CT, USA
2016
Flat Sunlight, The Factory Contemporary Art Center, HCMC, Vietnam
2015
A Site Between, Next Art Tainan, Taiwan, China
2012
Voracious Embrace, organized by San Art at HCMC Fine Arts Museum, Vietnam
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025
Muted Hums, 22F, Para Site Hong Kong, China
Does the flower hear the bee?, 15th Shanghai Biennale, China
6th VH AWARD, Hyundai Motor Studio Beijing, China and Hyundai Motor Group Campus, South Korea
2024
Nurture Gaia, Bangkok Art Biennale, Bangkok, Thailand
In Absence, Presence, Nguyen Art Foundation, Saigon, Vietnam
2023
Cyphering, Vibrating, Emanating, screenings and performance, Delfina Foundation, London
Monographs, Asian Film Archive Oldham Theatre Foyer, Singapore
2022
Flowing Moon Embracing Land, Jeju Biennale, South Korea
Boundary Conditions, mM Artcenter, South Korea
Illuminated Curiosities, Nguyen Art Foudantion, HCMC, Vietnam
2021
Posthuman Ensemble, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea
2020
AM I Superwoman, San Art, HCMC, Vietnam
No Cai Bum, Diem Phung Thi Exhibition house, Hue, Vietnam
Flat Sunlight (film), screening as part of So Far, So Right, Taipei Contemporary Art Center,
Taiwan, China
2018
March Project, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
2017
Flat Sunlight (film), Screening at Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin,
La Gaite Lyrique, Paris and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
2016
Borderless, Skyline with flying people 3, Mam Art, Hanoi Women’s Museum, Vietnam
2015
Sacred Water, Image Ark Gallery, Kathmandu, Nepal
2014
Disrupted Choreographies, the Carré d’Art Museum, Nîmes, France
2013
Foreign Bodies, The Wellcome Collection, London, UK
SELECTED SCREENINGS
2025
They Became Myth. Moving Image from Vietnam, VOX Centre, Canada
6th VH AWARD, House of Electronic Arts (HEK), Basel, Switzerland and Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria
Hypnotising Chicken, Contemporary Art Tasmania, Australia
Video Journey to Vietnam, Kyoto Art Center, Japan
2020
So Far, So Right, Taipei Contemporary Art Center, Taiwan
Grants/Scholarships
2024
Finalist, 6th VH AWARD
2017
Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Arts Grant
2016
AXA Grant - Collaboration with the Zoonosis team at the Oxford Clinical Research Unit HCMC
Vietnam
2014–2015
Wellcome Trust INternational Engagement Award for Sacred Water
2003–2007
Freeman Asian Scholarship, 4-year merit-based full scholarship to Wesleyan University
2005, 2006
Wesleyan Writers Conference Scholarship
Residencies
2023
Delfina Foundation, London, UK
2020
NTU CCA Residencies, Singapore
2018
March Project, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
Wesleyan University East Asian Department, CT, USA
2013
Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taipei, Taiwan, China
2012
Art in Global Health, Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, HCMC. Initiated by the Wellcome
Trust UK
2010
Mino Paper Village, Gifu, Japn