(Left to right) Contemporary dancer Masaru Kakio, the artist, and Yukichi Matsumoto, the late director of the Osaka-based theatre company Ishinha.

(Left to right) Contemporary dancer Masaru Kakio, the artist, and Yukichi Matsumoto, the late director of the Osaka-based theatre company Ishinha.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba was born in Tokyo to a Vietnamese father and a Japanese mother. Growing up and being educated in Japan and the USA, he earned his BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 1992 and then his MFA in the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1994. Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, after 18 years of working in Vietnam is now residing and creating artworks in Houston, Texas.

For almost 25 years of working as a global artist, his works can be seen as a culmination of memorial projects. In 2001, with his first underwater film project, Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards showed at the 1st Yokohama Triennial, the artist comes into recognition in the international contemporary art world. Since then he has been commissioned to create series of underwater films. His second project based on the 1968 Tet Offensive, Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II was conceived for the exhibition series the MATRIX at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2003. He has continued to direct and film two other underwater films in the water of Japan with Memorial Project Minamata: Neither Either nor Neither – A Love Story, a memorial for the Minamata Disease patients and Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point – Memorial Project Okinawa, a memorial tracing the Christmas Bombing of North Vietnam in 1972.

From 2004-2007 in Luang Prabang, Laos, he created a film on the Mekong River titled The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of the Bodhi Tree which brought his filming experience above water. Also in 2007, he returned to producing installation works with The Globe Project: Garden of Globes commissioned for his solo museum show at Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland.

In that same exhibition, he began his ongoing project Breathing is Free: 12,756.3, an attempt to physically experience the world refugee crisis by running the distance of the diameter of the earth, 12,756.3km. Up to now, he has run approximately one-fourth of the total distance culminated through 17 different cities in the world.

His works are often generated from multiple landscapes of thoughts combining unlikely mixture into the existing context of local history and issues. In his most recent film from 2013, The Master and the Slave: Inujima Monogatari filmed at Inujima island in Setouchi, Japan, he attempts to survive Inujima’s history with Japan’s national sport of baseball played inside the last stone quarry of the island. A batter and a pitcher confront each other, but with a romantic endeavor of hitting the stones out from the island to mainland Japan.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba has exhibited in numerous international triennials and biennales including Venice, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Shanghai, Yokohama, and Guangzhou. One can also find his works in public collections at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in NY, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo as well as many more museums, foundations, and private collections in the world.

Museum Collections

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY

Asia Society New York

Whitney Museum of American Art, NY

Benesse Holdings, Inc., Japan

Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris

Rubell Collection, Miami

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

TheatreWorks Singapore

Shiseido Art House, Tokyo

Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto

MIT List Visual Arts Center

Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou

Manchester Art Gallery, UK

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki

Stavanger International Collection

Singapore Art Museum

Monsoon Art Collection, London

Museum of Art Lucerne

MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon

Fondazione per l'Arte Contemporanea Victor Pinchuk, Kiev

T-B A21, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna

Selected Solo Exhibitions


2022

  • Metaphysically Yours - Bruises Under Conscience, Mizuma & Kips, New York

2021

  • While I am Dead - A Prelude to Life, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

2012

  • Jun NGUYEN-HATSUSHIBA, palais de l'isle, Annecy, France

2010 

  • Thank you ありがとう Cảm ơn, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

  • Breathing is Free: 12,756.3: New Work, Rymer Gallery, School of Art Institute Chicago,
    curated by Nora A. Taylor

2009

  • Breathing is Free: 12,756.3: New Work by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Arizona State University Art Museum, AZ, USA, curated by Heather Lineberry and Nora A. Taylor.

2008

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, The Globe Project in Beijing, Mizuma & One Gallery, Beijing, China

  • Vietnam: A Memorial Work by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Asia Society, NY, USA, curated by Miwako Tezuka

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England

2007

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, the Ground, the Root and the Air, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY, USA

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, the Ground, the Root and the Air, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Kunstmuseum Luzern, curated by Susanne Neubauer (cat.)

2005

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden, curated by Lars Grambye & Fredrik Liew (cat.)

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Lehmann Maupin, NY, USA

  • Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas – Battle of Easel Point – Memorial Project, Okinawa, Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY

2004

  • MAM Project 002:Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, curated by Mami Kataoka (cat.)

  • Memorial Project Vietnam, Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, CAAM, the Canary Islands, Spain, curated by Álvaro Rodríguez Fominaya

2003

  • MACRO, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, Italy, curated by Danilo Eccher/Yuko Hasegawa (cat.)

  • Video Cube: FIAC 2003, Paris, France, exhibited by Mizuma Art Gallery

  • Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex - For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba/MATRIX 203: Memorial Project Vietnam, UC Berkeley Art Museum, USA curated by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson (brochure) Travel to: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA, curated by Dan Cameron Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, USA Austin Museum of Art, USA

  • Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex, MIT List Visual Arts Center, USA, curated by Jane E. Farver

  • Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards, Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Germany, curated by Elke Gruhn

2002

  • Memorial Project Minamata: Neither Either nor Neither – A Love Story, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

  • Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards, Govett – Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, curated by Gregory Burke (bro.)

  • Video Cube: FIAC 2002, Paris, France, exhibited by Galerie Chantal Crousel

  • Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Galeria Animal, Santiago, Chile

  • Towards the Complex (video screening), De Appel, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2000

  • Xich Lo 2001 – The Making of Alternative History, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

1998

  • In Between, Shiseido Ginza Art Space, Tokyo, Japan (cat.)

  • Individuals-Collections, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

  • WWW.XEOM.COM, Blue Space Gallery, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

1997

  • Dream, 29 Hang Bai Exhibition House, Hanoi, Vietnam

1996

  • The Mosaic Series Exhibition, Dallas Visual Art Center, USA

  • Studio Gallery/Sculpture Garden, Center For the Arts, Brookhaven College, Dallas, USA

  • Trammell Crow Pavilion Gallery, Dallas, USA

1995

  • Photographs from Vietnam, SGI-USA Dallas Culture Center, USA

  • New Works 95:02, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, ArtPace, San Antonio, USA (bro.)

Biennales/Triennales

2013 Setouchi Triennale

2011 Guangzhou Triennial • Yokohama Triennale

2010 Shanghai Biennale

2009 Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale
Asia Pacific Triennial

2008 Nanjing Triennial • Guangzhou Triennial
Seoul International Media Art Biennale
Kuandu Biennale

2007 Asian Art Biennial

2006 Singapore Biennale • Gwangju Biennale

2005 Venice Biennale • Lyon Biennale
Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art

2004 Sevilla Biennale • Shanghai Biennale

2003 Venice Biennale • Istanbul Biennial

2002 International Video Art Biennial
Biennale of Sydney • Busan Biennial
Sao Paulo Biennale

2001 Yokohama Triennale

2000 Gwangju Biennale