Bao Vuong 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. Like thousands of boat people, he and his family wandered many long months in the open sea and moved from one refugee camp to another hoping to find a welcoming land. Eventually they found asylum in France. They settled in the south of France, where later on he would start his artistic education. Bao grew up with a sense of uprooting. In his artistic practice, whether it’s painting, installation or performance, Bao tries to reconstruct buried memories by working with remembrance.

At the Musée Départemental des Arts Asiatiques in Nice, the exhibition Derrière les vagues is an invitation to contemplate “the light in the darkness” through 11 monumental canvases charged with material, history and emotion.

Text in English and French.