Vietnamese filmmaker shortlisted for largest British contemporary art award

The organizers announced the seven nominees Thursday. Thi, Rushdi Anwar (Kurdistan), Carolina Caycedo (U.K.), Alia Farid (Kuwait/Puerto Rico), Naomi Rincon Gallardo (U.S.), Taloi Havini (Bougainville/Papua New Guinea) and Mounira Al Solh (Lebanon/Netherlands) are all in with a chance to win the Artes Mundi prize in the U.K. with a 40,000 pound (nearly $50,000) prize pot.

Vietnam’s Nguyen Trinh Thi (bottom right) and other shortlisted artists. Photo courtesy of Artes Mundi

For the tenth-anniversary edition of the biennial award, AM 10, works by nominated artists will be presented at multiple venues across Wales from October 2023 to March 2024 and the winner will be announced during the six-month exhibition.

The venue partners are: the contemporary art gallery Mostyn in Llandudno; Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; Chapter, Cardiff; and National Museum Cardiff.

Nguyen Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based filmmaker and artist. Her practice currently investigates the power of sound and listening, as well as the multiple relationships between image, sound, and space, while maintaining an interest in history, memory, representation, ecology, and the unknown.

Her work has been shown at international festivals and exhibitions like the Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (APT9) in Brisbane, the Sydney Biennale (2018), the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Lyon Biennale (2015), the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (2014), and the Singapore Biennale (2013).

Her mixed-media installation, ‘And They Die A Natural Death’, will be on display at the contemporary art exhibition Documenta 15, which will take place from June 18 until Sep. 25 this year in Kassel, Germany.