Her central question - both personal and universally relevant - is: Can humans be replaced by technology?

The exhibition space evokes a dialogue between anxiety and simulation. Duong wants viewers to confront the blurred boundary between authentic human identity and the distorted self in the digital era.

She began nurturing this idea five years ago and gradually completed the artworks that now form the core of this exhibition.

Speaking to VietNamNet, Duong shared that painting is first and foremost a form of personal fulfillment. But beyond that, it becomes a way for audiences to engage and interpret in their own ways.

“Writers solve problems with words; painters do it with images,” she said.

Duong Thuy Duong emphasized that she doesn't feel out of place in society, but she chooses to maintain a certain distance - “a privilege,” she calls it - of a generation that grew up experiencing real life, real relationships, and real friends.

Her position is one of in-betweenness - between Hanoi and Berlin, where she currently resides; between self and society; between the artist and the audience.

She is neither fully within nor completely outside, giving her a neutral vantage point to create reflective works that ask questions rather than deliver answers.

Duong has lived and worked in Germany for over 20 years. She has built a quiet life abroad, raising two children.

Outside her artistic world, she lives as an ordinary woman: going to the market, cooking, and tutoring her children daily. She describes herself as “just a woman who paints,” rather than someone doing anything grand.

“My generation may be the last to grow up without technology,” she said. “Sometimes I see how different my kids’ childhoods are. There are things they can’t experience or understand - sometimes even solved only through tech.”

Born in 1979 in Hanoi, Duong Thuy Duong is a prominent Vietnamese visual artist based in Berlin.

She studied at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts (2000) before receiving a scholarship to Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, Germany, where she graduated in 2009.

To date, she has participated in over 20 solo and group exhibitions in various countries.

Tuan Chieu