The Lebadang Creative Arts Fund would like to extend its deepest gratitude to all applicants who participated in and accompanied the organising committee throughout this journey. The Fund is honoured to recognise the recipients of the 2025 Lebadang Creative Arts Grant – a programme established to acknowledge and support outstanding practices in artistic creation, research, conservation, and the development of the arts community in Vietnam.
- Creative Practice Category: Visual artist Le Giang and installation artist Le Tan Chung
- Research Category: Writer To Nguyen Nhat Anh
- Young Leadership Category: Graduate Le Thi Ngoc Phung
- Myshu Award 2025, established and sponsored by the Lebadang Memory Space: Scholar Vu Do
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About Lebadang Creative Arts Fund:
Founded in 2015 in accordance with the wishes of the late master Lebadang, the Fund is dedicated to empowering emerging scholars, creative labourers, and leaders. Its mission is to foster creative growth, carry forward artistic legacies, and strengthen the presence of Vietnamese art in the global arena.
About Lebadang Creative Arts Grant:
The Lebadang Creative Arts Grant is a recurring program organized by the Lebadang Creative Arts Fund to encourage the creativity of younger generations while promoting the artistic legacy of the late painter Lebadang.
About the winners:
Visual Artist Le Giang received her Bachelor’s degree from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts and a Master’s degree from the University of the Arts London. Her practice investigates the complex relationships between human beings, artificial elements, and the natural world. Selected exhibitions include the group exhibition Toả 5 at VCCA, Hanoi (2025); the Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA, Australia (2024); her solo exhibition Future Completed at VCCA, Hanoi (2022); Art Basel Hong Kong (2022); and the Asian Art Biennial Phantasmapolis in Taiwan (2021). In recognition of her contributions to contemporary art, she was named in the Vietnamese edition of Forbes “30 Under 30” in 2018.
For the awarded project, she focuses on printmaking techniques and mixed-media painting, drawing inspiration from a synthesis of embossing, screen printing, and the “gold technique,” as well as from the spirit of continuous innovation embodied by Lebadang. Le Giang aims to explore paper as a multidimensional entity, paying tribute to the master’s material and spatial thinking. Through engagement with the archives at Lebadang Memory Space, her project promises to unfold layered, geological dimensions, both architectural and spiritual, constructed from paper, where past and future coexist.
Le Giang portrait. Photo: Courtesy of the character.
Le Giang, “Water and greenery 2 (Deau Et de verdure 2)” (2019), series of 17 embossing works, 28.5 x 39 cm. Photo: Courtesy of the character.
Landscape Architect and Installation Artist Le Tan Chung is recognised for a practice rooted in attentive listening to place and to the memories embedded within space. His notable achievements include First Prize at Transforming the Runway, organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) in collaboration with the Singapore Institute of Planners (SIP) and the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA); First Prize at the 33rd Loa Thành Awards; and the Silver Prize in the Emerging Artist category at the 3rd UOB Painting of the Year.
Le Tan Chung engages with space that allow it to reveal its own rhythms and histories. He often works with reclaimed materials bearing traces of time such as slag ore, burnt rice husk ash, and mother-of-pearl, as a means of exploring the relationship between human beings and their environment. His proposed installation draws inspiration from the late artist’s small house hidden behind bamboo groves in Bich La village — a place inhabited not only by memory, but by the presence of ancestors, parents, and siblings. The work takes the form of a large dome constructed from raw, rugged materials, evoking a celestial chamber. Dark and heavy from the outside, the interior is illuminated by light filtering through the apex, creating a space where darkness, matter, and light coexist. Within this environment, personal memory is placed within the broader strata of collective and geological memory, guiding viewers on a journey back to their roots.
Le Tan Chung portrait. Photo: Courtesy of the character.
Le Tan Chung, “Roots” (2025), perspective 01. Photo: Courtesy of the character.
Writer and Independent Researcher To Nguyen Nhat Anh is based in Ho Chi Minh City. She holds a dual Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Communication from Denison University, and a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from University College London. Her research practice focuses on examining modern and contemporary affective structures through narrative forms ranging from literature and cinema to painting and visual art.
Nhat Anh’s research project investigates the sophisticated synthesis of graphic and linguistic forms within the oeuvre of Lebadang. Utilising a framework of intermediality and Deleuzian theory, she situates the late artist’s visual narrating as a vital act of cultural translation. The study seeks to illuminate how his unique technical maneuvering navigated a complex diasporic identity, ultimately contributing a liberated, humanist perspective to the discourse of global modernism.
To Nguyen Nhat Anh portrait. Photo: Courtesy of the character.
Nhat Anh, “In dazzling palimpsests seized Kieu’s poetic residues”, Art Nation #9 (12.2025), pp. 184-193.
Le Thi Ngoc Phung is currently a student in Art and Media Studies at Fulbright University Vietnam. She has accumulated diverse experiences spanning film production, teaching assistance, and programme management for film festivals. Alongside this, she has explored performative practices through Project Đẩy Sàn – Dựng 1 in Vietnam and an artist residency programme at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. These experiences have shaped her sustained engagement with the visual arts.
During her upcoming Young Leadership term, she aims to contribute to the documentation and critical reflection of the research and creative practices of scholars and artists affiliated with the Lebadang Creative Arts Fund, particularly within the context of artist residencies. For Phung, working with the Fund represents a long-term commitment to learning, developing her own practice, and expanding access to the late master’s legacy for younger generations.
Le Thi Ngoc Phung portrait. Photo: Mini Creative Studio.
A scene from “4. 48 Psychosis” (2023). Photo: Tuan Kiet.
Scholar Vu Do is an art conservator, artist, and independent researcher. He currently serves as the Gretchen & David Welch Fellow in Object Conservation at the National Museum of Asian Art. He received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in Art Conservation at SUNY Buffalo State University, and completed professional internships at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. He is also the discoverer, conservator, and curator of the “Hidden Treasures” collection by Phan Ke An. Following the completion of his graduate studies, Vu hopes to contribute to the advancement of conservation practice in Vietnam, with the long-term goal of establishing the country’s first interdisciplinary conservation training programme.
Vu Do’s proposed research project outlines a technical survey and preventive conservation programme for a selected group of works currently housed at the Lebadang Memory Space. The project is structured around three integrated objectives: (1) to investigate materials and artistic techniques through documenting material systems and methods of production across representative works; (2) to map condition and risk by identifying forms of deterioration in relation to material characteristics and environmental or operational factors; and (3) to propose preventive conservation strategies tailored to the operational conditions of the Memory Space, including guidelines for display, storage, handling, cleaning, and environmental management. The project aims to build a body of data grounded in direct object-based research and translate it into practical, applicable recommendations, thereby contributing to a reference model for the conservation of mixed-media collections in Vietnam.
Vu Do portrait. Photo: Courtesy of the character.
Study of the Nativity by Duccio di Buoninsegna at the Painting Conservation Department, National Gallery of Art. Photo: Courtesy of the character.
Through the 2025 Lebadang Creative Arts Grant, we seek to continue fostering an artistic ecosystem in which creative practice, research, education, and conservation may coexist in mutual dialogue and nourishment. The Lebadang Creative Arts Fund warmly invites the public to follow the ongoing development of these projects in the coming months. Upcoming residencies, research initiatives, artistic productions, and scholarly presentations will be progressively updated through the Fund’s official platforms.
