The Crossing 260 by Bao Vuong, 2025 Oil paint, acrylic, and aluminium powder on canvas, 140 × 250 cm. © Bao Vuong, courtesy of Verduyn Gallery
Bao Vuong’s ‘The Crossing’ series draws on the memory of his family’s forced flight from Vietnam by boat. Vuong does not remember as he was just an infant at the time, but the experience has deeply affected his life. Now based in Brussels, Vuong creates monochromatic paintings that give shape to these buried memories.
Here the artist reflects on his first visit to Japan for Tokyo Gendai with Verduyn Gallery, as well as the emotions that guide his paintings and the hope that lies within each of them.
“Pain does not put out the light. In my paintings, the darkness of the crossing coexists with a persistent clarity: hope.”
Can you tell us about your experience showing your work at Tokyo Gendai?
It was an intense and precious experience. It was my first time in Japan, a country I had long dreamed of discovering. All my works found collectors there, and the paintings from ‘The Crossing’ were received with particular warmth; I felt the Japanese audience was especially moved. I believe that comes from the work’s spareness: a single color, limited materials, a minimal language. The sea, the waves, the wind, the movement – everything speaks of impermanence, like a haiku.
Was there any feedback from Japanese collectors or visitors that left an impression, or surprised you?
Many spoke of an intimate resonance. As an island nation ringed by water, Japan carries the shadows left by the great tragedies of the twentieth century. Its relationship to the sea, to pain, and to resilience echoes both the darkness in my paintings and the glimmer they allow through.
Your work centers around your family’s escape from Vietnam, when you were just an infant. How did you collect these memories that informed your art, and was your family open with you about their experiences?
I have no precise memories – I was too young – but I carried them in my body. To fill that absence, I wove an allegory by replaying, tirelessly, the same scene, to tame the wounds of being a child of the boat people. Through art I recreated those memories in fragments: stories too painful to tell, silences, gestures of remembrance. My parents did not say everything, but I learned to read between the words. Painting allowed me to give shape to this buried memory.
What are your first memories of growing up in France? And how did those experiences shape you as a person and as an artist?
I arrived in France at the age of two and grew up between fragility and hybridity; it shaped my sensibility as an artist. I felt I belonged to the horizon more than to any host land. In my paintings I express that ambivalence: the longing for elsewhere and the need to go with the current. There I learned to let go – like a boat riding the sea.
What were your first encounters with art?
I drew constantly as a child. Art asserted itself as an obvious path. Early on, I carried the weight of the sea – the tragedy of those who leave their country, the traumatic memory of exile.
How did you discover this monochromatic way of painting?
By stripping back. Black, as a mirror for light, lets me get to the essence. It allows the vibration to surface, like a memory of water.
Alongside themes of loss and uprooting, does hope hold a place in your work?
Always. Pain does not put out the light. In my paintings, the darkness of the crossing coexists with a persistent clarity: hope. Over time I have understood that shadow and light are two sides of the same coin – as yin and yang remind us – and that life moves in cycles, like the sea: the waves’ ceaseless rises and falls.
<Thank you very much for the interview, and for participating at Tokyo Gendai this year!
Visit Bao Vuong’s official website here.>
Bao Vuong
Bao is currently based in Brussels, Belgium. He works between France, Belgium and Vietnam. The artist was born in Vietnam in the late 1970s. When he was barely one year old, his parents were forced to flee the country by sea. Eventually they found asylum in France, where later on he would start his artistic education. Through painting, installation, and performance, the artist explores memory, displacement, and the tension between past and present.
