Thao Nguyen Phan wins Han Nefkens Foundation – Loop Barcelona Video Art Award 2018

Thao Nguyen Phan wins the Han Nefkens Foundation – LOOP Barcelona Video Art Award 2018, in collaboration with the Fundació Joan Miró. 

The winner has been selected by a judging panel chaired by Han Nefkens, Founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation, and joined by Emilio Alvarez, 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, author, curator and professor.

Thao Nguyen Phan wins the Han Nefkens Foundation – LOOP Barcelona Video Art Award for her heterogeneous and powerful works, which are unique, poetic forms 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 Fundació Joan Miró. Promising young artist Thao Nguyen Phan has a great 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 will receive USD 15,000 in 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.