Images in Motion
Artist of the Year / Best Portrait Painting
For Thanh Tuong, also known as Tuong3rd, art is not limited to the canvas. It moves through painting, comics, illustration, teaching, publishing and community projects. Born in 1998 and based in Ho Chi Minh City, Tuong belongs to a young generation of Vietnamese artists who work fluidly between fine art and popular visual culture. His practice reflects the energy of a city in constant change, while remaining deeply rooted in personal experience.
Tuong began drawing at an early age. For him, image-making has always been a way to understand himself and express emotions that may be difficult to explain through words. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts, continuing to develop a practice that combines academic study with an open, experimental spirit.
His work spans many materials and formats, including poster colour, gouache, oil paint, acrylic and digital techniques. This variety is important to the way he thinks about art. A painting, a comic page, a postcard, a print or a piece of merchandise can all become part of the same creative world. Rather than treating these forms as separate, Tuong allows them to speak to one another, expanding how his images are made, shared and experienced.
At the centre of his practice is the relationship between the individual and society. Living in Ho Chi Minh City, a metropolis shaped by layered histories, social expectations and rapid transformation, Tuong uses personal narrative as a starting point to explore larger questions. His work looks at how a person forms their identity within systems that constantly shape behaviour, memory and imagination.
In this sense, his art is both intimate and social. It begins with the self, but does not remain there. Personal feelings, daily observations and private questions become ways to examine the pressures and possibilities of contemporary life. His images often carry a sense of movement, as if the self is always being redrawn in relation to the city, community and the changing world around it.
Beyond his studio work, Tuong is active as an art educator and cultural organizer. He teaches drawing and painting, develops workshops for emerging artists and creates independent art gatherings that encourage exchange within the local creative community. These activities show his belief that art is not only something to be exhibited, but something to be shared, practiced and discussed.
His personal project Cửa Hiệu Phù Phiếm reflects this spirit clearly. Through small-scale publishing and art merchandise, Tuong brings together paintings, prints, postcards and comics as different forms of artistic circulation. The project gives his work another life outside the gallery, allowing images to enter more casual, personal and everyday spaces.
What makes Thanh Tuong’s practice distinctive is its openness. He does not draw a hard line between artist, illustrator, comic creator, teacher and organizer. Instead, he treats each role as part of a larger creative ecosystem. Through this approach, his work becomes flexible, accessible and closely connected to the present.
Thanh Tuong’s art speaks to a generation growing up amid shifting urban realities and expanding visual cultures. Through images, he explores how identity is formed, how communities are built and how personal stories can become part of a wider conversation.
