Home Participants 25th Biennale of Sydney (2026) Tuan Mami

Tuan Mami

Tuan Mami is a Vietnamese interdisciplinary and experimental artist whose practice continually evolves through the exploration of new mediums, methods and cross-disciplinary approaches, including anthropology and research-based inquiry. His work increasingly takes the form of socially engaged experiments, performative installations in which he re-constructs situations that invite people or objects from specific realities to enter and interact together in a social process. Over the years, he has focused on studying human movement and its impact on history, memories, power structures and the nature. His practice explores and questions the transhistorical processes arising from social interactions between people and their environment.

Tuan Mami, SEEDING THE FUTURE No. 3, 2026. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy of the artist © Tuan Mami. Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, White Bay Power Station. Photograph: Document Photography

Tuan Mami
Born 1981, Hanoi, Vietnam
Lives and works in Hanoi, Vietnam

SEEDING THE FUTURE No. 3 2026
wood, clay, Vietnamese plant seeds, speakers
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney
Courtesy of the artist

SEEDING THE FUTURE No. 3 is a participatory installation that traces Vietnamese immigrant communities across the globe, from Europe and Asia to the Americas. For this iteration, the project collaborates with the Vietnamese community in Sydney, collecting Vietnamese seeds from around Australia, along with collective memories and personal stories recounted by Vietnamese boat people from the Oral Historic New Orleans Collection, to create a shared social platform through a deconstructive process. SEEDING THE FUTURE No. 3 forms part of the ongoing Vietnamese Immigrating Garden Project.

The work adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on experimental and cross-disciplinary methods, including anthropology and research-based inquiry. It unfolds through socially engaged experiments and performative installations that reconstruct situations in which people and objects from specific lived realities are invited to interact through social processes. The project examines human movement and its impact on history, memory, power structures and nature, exploring transhistorical processes that emerge from interactions between people and their environments.