Kieu Tran

Overview
Kieu Tran

Kieu Tran is a first generation Vietnamese American artist based in Oakland, California.

She creates elegant, sensuous, biomorphic ceramic sculptures that exist somewhere between the abstract and figurative. In her work, Kieu strives to give expression to emotion, to allow the aesthetic of the form to tell you something about the inspiration behind the piece on a wordless, instinctual level. She considers her sculptures to be an effort that gives form to the human soul and to remind us of our shared humanity.

 

“My work is extremely personal and deeply about emotion. They’re shapes that speak to me on an innate level. I believe it’s possible that feeling can be transmitted through my fingertips in this corporeal, nonlinguistic dialogue I have with clay. I think it’s possible that these feelings can be transmitted through the tactility of a sculptural object.” 

-Kieu Tran

Works
Exhibitions
Events
Bibliography
Kieu Tran

Education 

2011 BA, UCLA, Art History 

 

Solo Exhibitions 

2021 BLOOMING, Local Language Arts, Oakland, CA

 

Group Exhibitions

2022 SF Art Market, Maybaum Gallery, San Francisco, CA 

2022 Through the Looking Glass, Glass Rice, San Francisco, CA

2020 FM Oakland Annual 20/21, FM Oakland, Oakland, CA

2020 Constructed Ceramics, Applied Contemporary, Oakland, CA (Juried show) 

2019 On Centre Final Exhibition, Castello Jazz Bar, Certaldo Alto, Italy

 

Fellowships

2012 Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship Fellowship, American Association of Museums

 

Press

2021 Interior Design Magazine, Fall Market Tabloid October 31 2021 2021 Surface Magazine, Designer of the Day: Kieu Tran

2021 Design Anthology, Asia Edition, Issue 31

2021 EST LIVING, Sculptor Kieu Tran Debuts in Californian Exhibition 2021 Sight Unseen, Saturday Selects Week of October 4, 2021

 

Artist in Residence

June 2022 Digital Stone Carving Residency, Tuscany, Italy

July - August 2021, Local Language Arts, Oakland, CA

Jan ‐ March 2019, On Centre, La Meridiana International School of Ceramics, Italy

● 3 month intensive ceramics course in Tuscany

● Received the Pietro Maddalena scholarship to participate in the course, granted for the demonstration of exceptional promise and merit

 

Published Works

2012 Merzbau- Kurt Schwitters’ Materialized Model of Memory, GRAPHITE Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts, The Archival , Issue No. 3.