Mai Loan Tu, “He could never paint this colour because it had no name”
Ballpen on paper
21×29.7cm
2016
(unframed)
With the aim of bringing the viewer towards a new space of reflection, Mai Loan Tu devotes herself to revealing that grey area “where words can’t quite capture a feeling, a sensation or an idea, like this one that stays stuck on the tip of your tongue or like that dream that only leaves an aftertaste in your mind.”
Whether through drawing on paper or through other media and by juxtaposing different levels of interpretation, she tries to create a meeting space between two universes: the one she suggests to the viewers and the one they choose to project on.
At some point in her reflection, Mai Loan meticulous way of drawing engendered the desire to explore a variety of ancestral techniques. She has since developed her practice to bring ancient craft into the contemporary world and maintain old knowledge and techniques alive. Her works nowadays keeps evolving back and forth between works on (or with) paper and the techniques she has deeply studied (tattoo, stained-glass and lately embroidery).
French artist Mai-loan Tu started her career in Belgium where she learned creative illustration at the Erg (School of Graphical Research ). She then pursued her studies in Barcelona at the Eina.
After exhibiting in Venezuela, France and Spain, where she won the Drawing prize at the International Fair of Contemporary Art SWAB in 2012, she moved to Ho-chi-minh City, Vietnam, where she had 2 exhibitions while working as a tattoo artist. She lives in the UK since 2017.
