Liên Hoàng-Xuân

Liên Hoàng-Xuân © Ali Arkady

Liên Hoàng-Xuân, an artist of Vietnamese, Tunisian and French origin, was born in Paris in 1995. Multi-disciplinary, her installations, paintings, prints and videos enable her to blend memories with a loving imagination in a fictional city she calls the "South of Nowhere": a blend of Tunis, Saigon and Beirut.

Biography

“My work interrogates elegiac themes (love lament, nostalgia, etc.) through sculpture, painting and video. I use numerous referents from classical lyrical literature, love songs and sugary pop-culture clips, which I combine with superstitious symbols and visual motifs drawn from the great cities I love and where I’ve lived: Saigon, Beirut, Tunis…

This multiplicity of referents invites us to draw a parallel between the chaos of human emotional life and a wandering in an imaginary geography, an affective geography in an area I like to call the ‘South of Nowhere ‘: an immense desert bordered by the great inland sea, where monstrous, dusty and gigantic cities bloom here and there, smelling of roses and iron.”

French-Tunisian artist Liên Hoàng-Xuân was born in Paris in 1995. After two years of literary preparatory classes, she entered the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2016, then the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts de Beyrouth (ALBA) in 2019, from which she will graduate in 2021. She obtained her DNSAP from the École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux- Arts de Paris in 2022, after training in the studios of Pascale Marthine Tayou and Clément Cogitore. She is also selected for the Mophradat Foundation’s “Fund the art in Beirut” grant as a member of the Beirut-based YBM collective in 2019, and is selected for the Habibi Collective’s Shasha Movies program and the Documed-Tunis, Aflemha-Cairo, Madriff and Filmets-Barcelona festivals for her short film “Last night on earth” in 2021.

Multi-disciplinary, her installations, paintings, prints and videos enable her to blend memories with a loving imagination in a fictional city she calls the “South of Nowhere”: a blend of Tunis, Saigon and Beirut.

In her work, Liên Hoàng-Xuân draws inspiration from these three cities to unfold an elegy full of motor noises, where all kinds of narratives intersect with those of oriental poetry. Her paintings, an alloy of woodcut and gold leaf, are filled with elemental motifs and texts derived from haiku-like messages sent from a distance, and can be read as sentimental trajectories in which cars embody the wanderings of a post-industrial world.

After the exhibitions at Galerie Lalalande, Paris (Leimotiv, July-August 2021 / L’ombre d’un doute, 2022), she takes part in the group shows Maintain at the Beirut Art Center, Beirut (Lebanon) in 2022 and in 2023 she presents her work at Joyridin’ – Humain Autonome at the FRAC Normandie in Caen and 100% at the Grande Halle de La Villette, Paris before taking part in the “À Première vue” event in collaboration with Galerie LOFT.

Career

Solo show
2025 • Eleven planets of UltraBride_OnlineDrift_Core, Galerie DS, Paris
2024 • Qasida: The impossible journey from East to West, Galerie Fahmy Malinovsky, Paris, Fr
2023 • « South of no North - just a big field of flowers »,cur : Elora Weill-Engerer, Revie Projects, Paris, Fr

Collective Exhibition (selection)

2025 • Habiter la famille, Cur: Ludovic Delalande, Fondation Fiminco, Fr

2024 • Duo show «Last peep show before summer», Galerie Loft, Paris, Fr
«Love is everything else», Centre d’art aux images en mouvement, Corse, Fr
«Construire un feu», cur: Juliette Hage, Tour Orion Non-Etoile, Montreuil, Fr
«Amour», cur: J.Coulon, galerie Javault-Eva Pritsky, Paris
«Autohistorias», cur: M.Bouteloup et l’équipe du Théâtre des Expositions, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris

2023 • « Joyridin’ - Humain Autonome », cur : Marianne Derrien, Sarah Ihler-Meyer,
Salim Santa Lucia, FRAC Normandie, Caen, Fr
« 100% ! l’expo », cur : Inès Geoffroy, Grande halle de la Villette, Paris
Menart Fair, booth Revie Projects, Palais d’Iéna, Paris
Exposition de fin de résidence, cur : L.Torquéo, Villa Belleville, Paris
«Screenings» (avec A.Wheeraktakasul, A. Ingarden, M. Echard, etc.) , cur:
Mother Collective, Silencio, Paris

2022 • « Maintain », cur : Haig Aivazian, Beirut Art Center, Beyrouth, Liban
L’ombre d’un doute, cur : Adrien Poirier, Galerie La Lalande, Paris, Fr
Ygreve #2, cur : Roï Edelman, Espace Ygreve, Paris, Fr
Théâtre des expositions, cur. V.Morisseau, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris

2021 • Asia Now Fair / Booth Galerie Lalalande, Paris, Fr
YBM#3, Fondation Mophradat, Mar Mitr, Beyrouth, Liban
« Leitmotiv », Galerie La Lalande, Paris, Fr

2020 • YBM#1, Geitawi, Beyrouth, Liban

2018 • Copie d’anciens, etc., La Volonté 93, Saint-Ouen, Fr
La cloche aux fourmis, cur : laboratoire Agit’Art, off de la Biennale de
Dakar, Ancien Marché Malien, Sénégal

DISTINCTIONS - PRIX - RESIDENCES

2024–2025 – One-year residency, Fondation Fiminco, Paris, France
2023 Résidence de 6 mois à la villa Belleville, Paris, Fr
2022 Atelier à Ashkal Alwan, Beyrouth, Liban
2021 Sélection du court-métrage « Au dernier soir sur cette terre » aux éditions
2021 des festivals DOCUMED Tunis, MADRIFF Madrid, FILMETS Barcelone, Aflehma Le Caire, Dau-Fest Paris et dans la programmation de juillet 2021 de Shasha Movies (Habibi collective), plateforme curatoriale du cinéma indépendant de la région SWANA (South West Asia North Africa) Bourse « Fund the arts in Beirut : gatherings for uncertain futures »
2021 de la fondation Mophradat en tant que membre du collectif Yalla bala manyake basé à Beyrouth

Formation
2019 - 2021 Master of Visual arts à l’Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts de Beyrouth, Liban
2016 - 2022 École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, ateliers Tayou et Cogitore
2013 - 2015 Hypokhâgne et Khâgne option Lettres Modernes, Paris