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Free exhibition
Curated by Bindi Vora
What is communicated – or withheld – across generations?
Autograph
Rivington Place
London EC2A 3BA, UK
This exhibition is in currently in development at Autograph.
Pre-book free, timed tickets. Planning to visiting with a group of more than 10 people? Book a free group visit here.
Autograph is developing the first solo exhibition of the French Vietnamese artist Nhu Xuan Hua. Opening in Spring 2026, the exhibition will span both gallery spaces at our Shoreditch building, featuring newly commissioned work presented for the first time.
Working at the intersection of art and fashion photography, Hua reflects on the fragility of memory and the ways stories are communicated – or withheld – across generations. She reimagines archival photographs from her family’s time in Vietnam, and their early years in Europe, to create dreamlike digitally-altered compositions that shift between recognition and distortion. Across her work, Hua builds elaborate visual reconstructions that echo how memory in the diaspora can splinter, blur and slip from view.
Born and raised in Paris to immigrant parents who fled to Europe after the war in Vietnam (1955-1975), Hua grew up feeling a palpable distance from her Vietnamese heritage. Questions about the past were often met with the refrain Why are you asking? The past belongs to the past.
This loss of vocabulary – essential to understanding her own history – was further compounded by a communication void between Hua and her parents. Her father, who is oral-deaf, communicates in spoken Vietnamese and a broken, self-taught form of French Sign Language which he learned in the late 1970s after arriving in Paris. Across generations, there was no common language spoken in the household.
These silences, formed through migration and cultural rupture, reverberate through the diluted contours of bodies in her reworked family photographs, where figures merge and dissolve into one another.
Nhu Xuan Hua, We spend days inside tiny apartments and we enjoy a fake concrete canal
Nhu Xuan Hua, Family portrait at the wedding - Archive from the year '85, 2016-2021
Nhu Xuan Hua, The Dancers, Archive of year '85, 2016-2021
KS2+
Book a free exhibition visit for your group, including a short introduction by gallery staff
Nhu Xuan Hua (b. 1989) is a French artist and photographer of Vietnamese heritage, working between Paris and London.
Known for her distinctive visual language, she collaborates with international fashion houses such as Dior, Maison Margiela, Kenzo, and Gucci, while contributing to leading publications like Vogue, Time Magazine, and Dazed Beauty.
Originally trained in fashion photography, Hua has gradually shifted toward a multidisciplinary and introspective practice that explores memory, identity, and displacement. Her solo exhibitions at Huis Marseille (Amsterdam) and Fotografie Forum Frankfurt (DE) have marked her emergence as a powerful voice in contemporary photography.
In 2021, she returned to Paris and began weaving personal narrative into her work. Her solo exhibition Hug of a Swan at Huis Marseille reflected on six years of practice, blending fashion commissions with autonomous works tied to her Vietnamese heritage. Her first book, Tropism: Consequences of a Displaced Memory (Area Books), uses family archives and digital manipulation to explore the erosion and transformation of memory. The project was shown at AnneLaure Buffard Inc. during Paris Gallery Weekend 2023 and invited by the Institut français to be part of Photo Hanoi — Vietnam’s first photography biennale.
In 2024, she co-created Heaven and Hell with artist Vimala Pons for the Rencontres d’Arles. This bold, multidisciplinary exhibition merged photography, film, documentary, and sound installation, offering a new sensory and spatial experience of photographic storytelling. Her work is held in public and private collections, including Huis Marseille, the JP Morgan Collection, and CNAP (Centre national des arts plastiques), which recently acquired her piece Family Portrait at the Wedding, Archive from year 85’ for France’s national collection.
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Banner image: Nhu Xuan Hua, The one who couldn't talk [detail], 2021. © the artist.
Exhibition preview: All images © the artist. 1) Nhu Xuan Hua, We spend days inside tiny apartments and we enjoy a fake concrete canal. 2) Nhu Xuan Hua, Family portrait at the wedding - Archive from the year '85, 2016-2021. 3) Nhu Xuan Hua, The Dancers, Archive of year '85, 2016-2021.
About the artist: Courtesy Nhu Xuan Hua.
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Autograph is a space to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
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