Lem TragNguyen is a visual artist born in Germany and raised between Vietnam and Germany, whose work embodies the cultural interplay between East and West. Her artistic practice is rooted in a deep exploration of origin and belonging in a postcolonial context, where time, the body, and memory are in continuous flux.

Lem’s recent projects revolve around embodied memory and intergenerational care, seeking ways to transmit memory beyond textual discourse and official archival systems. She often works with domestic materials, which she transforms through acts of manipulation and performance. These materials gradually transcend their personal or local contexts, becoming conduits for collective memory and emotional resonance across generations.

Her work interrogates the fluidity of identity within postcolonial realities, proposing that identity is never fixed but continuously shaped by contact, movement, and time.

Lem studied in an MFA program focusing on the body, theory, and poetics in performance art. Her works have been presented in various exhibitions and art festivals, including: IN:ACT Performance Art Festival (Hanoi, Vietnam, 2017); the 20+ Anniversary Program of Nhà Sàn Studio (Vietnam, 2018); Confusion is Chaos Buried by Tranzit (Prague, Czech Republic, 2019); Wuwei Performance Series (Singapore, 2020); Month of Art Practice MAP (Vietnam, 2020, 2021); the 4th Industrial Art Biennial Istria (Croatia, 2023); Documenta 15 (Kassel) as a memeber of Nhasan Collective; *Suprainfinit Collisions- Marathon of Art Practices (*Bucharest, Ro) and Spacedumpling: Eleven-Day Kitchen Celebration at ifaGalerie Stuttgart (Germany, 2024).

Alongside her artistic practice, Lem is also active as a curator. Most recently, she curated a film screening program centered on the stories of the Vietnamese diaspora at the Linden Museum (Stuttgart, Germany, 2024), and co-led a workshop at Schwules Museum (Berlin, Germany, 2025).

In 2021, she founded Hay là—an independent platform focusing on performance art in Vietnam.

Remarkable activities/projects in 2020 – 2022: She participated in Wuwei Performance Series (Singapore) in 2020, MAP – Month of Art Practice (Vietnam) in 2020 & 2021. In 2021, Lem founded Hay là – a platform focusing on performance arts in Vietnam. In 2022, she joined the talk “Performance Art: The Possibilities of Body Language in Performance Space” at the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA), Nổ Cái Bùm in Dalat, Vietnam. Her project “Nối ( )” was also awarded funding from the Golden Rice Flower Grant 2021 – 2022, which was established within the programme Choreogra-free Lab. Her work “Cõng đá III” was included in Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany. (*)