SUNG TIEU

In 2025, Tieu was selected with Henrike Naumann to realise the German Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale under curator Kathleen Reinhardt; after Naumann’s death in February 2026, the commissioning bodies confirmed that the pavilion will go ahead and be realised posthumously, largely according to Naumann’s concept, which had been finalised before her death and will be presented alongside Tieu’s contribution.

Early life and career

Tieu moved from northern Vietnam to Germany as a child, joining her father who had worked as a contract labourer in the GDR, a family history that underpins her sustained engagement with migration, Cold War geopolitics and the legacies of socialist labour programmes. She studied fine arts at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg and at Goldsmiths, University of London, before completing the postgraduate programme at the Royal Academy Schools in London, graduating in 2018, and has since developed a practice that fuses archival research with autobiographical fragments and speculative scenarios. Early recognition came through exhibitions in Germany and the UK, culminating in high-profile presentations at Nottingham Contemporary and Haus der Kunst that cemented her reputation as an artist of international significance.

Works, methods and key projects

Tieu’s installations often restage spaces of control—waiting rooms, offices, detention-like corridors—using industrial materials, security infrastructure and minimalist display systems to evoke the ambient pressure of administration. In Zugzwang at Haus der Kunst, she transformed the museum into a labyrinth of steel fences, fluorescent lighting and sound, investigating how design aesthetics in bureaucratic environments can condition behaviour and induce anxiety. The project In Cold Print at Nottingham Contemporary and the Frieze Artist Award commission Moving Target Shadow Detection (2021) extended this approach to the controversial ‘Havana Syndrome’, combining brain-scan imagery, journalistic research and multi-channel sound to explore the blurred line between medical fact, media speculation and covert warfare.

Another strand of Tieu’s work focuses on migration histories and German reunification, as in Song for VEB Stern-Radio Berlin, which links GDR radio production, Vietnamese contract labour and contemporary diasporic experience through a mirrored sculptural environment and a layered sound score. Across these projects she frequently incorporates official documents, contracts and legal forms, sometimes redacted or rephrased, to expose what she has called the “macabre” implications hidden in bureaucratic language. Her exhibitions reference minimalism and systems art yet remain anchored in lived, often vulnerable experience, using repetition, grids and acoustic fields to translate abstract power structures into sensory encounters.

Themes and context

Tieu’s practice is driven by a close reading of how governance operates at the level of everyday life, from visa appointments and surveillance protocols to the architecture of public institutions. She examines the tension between individual agency and systemic regulation, asking how categories such as citizenship, security and belonging are enforced through design, sound and language. Her position as a German Vietnamese artist who grew up after reunification allows her to connect histories of the GDR, global Cold War alignments and contemporary border regimes, situating her work within broader conversations on post-socialism, diasporic identity and decolonial critique.

Exhibitions, recognition and Venice

Tieu has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including Haus der Kunst, Munich; Nottingham Contemporary; Kunsthalle Gießen; and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. She has participated in major international biennials such as the Bienal de São Paulo, the Kyiv Biennial, the Shanghai Biennale and the Gwangju Biennale, reflecting the global resonance of her investigations into power and perception. Awards such as the Frieze Artist Award and the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research in 2024 recognise the depth of her inquiry into the aesthetics of administration and the politics of sound. For the 61st Venice Biennale, the German Pavilion—commissioned by ifa and developed with the late Henrike Naumann and curator Kathleen Reinhardt—is set to foreground questions of historical responsibility, bureaucracy and social order, with Tieu playing a crucial role in carrying the project forward in Venice in dialogue with Naumann’s posthumously realised concept.

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Ocula | 2026