ba-bau collective was founded in mid-2021. The collective runs the space, practices art, exchanges expertise, and with the following core members open up new opportunities for the space:
Thao-Linh Dinh
Dinh Thao Linh is an independent art manager and curator in Hanoi who works with space, community and focuses on exchanges. In 2019, she founded ba-bau AIR - an intimate artist-in-residence space with a kitchen, coffee table, dining room and studio. She also experiments with haircuts, poetry writing, and other multidisciplinary practices.
Kieu-Anh Nguyen
Based in Hanoi, Vietnam, Kieu-Anh Nguyen (b. 1997) is an art practitioner with a background in linguistics and international relations. Her art takes the form of social participation, soft sculpture, writing, drawing, and food experiments; the works often suggest convergence between time, spaces, and sensory experiences. In doing so, her artistic vision cherishes and addresses the ephemerality of life, including unnoticed details and unconventional narratives.
She joined ba-bau AIR in 2019 and co-founded ba-bau collective in 2021, where she co-create safe spaces for boundaryless experimental & interdisciplinary collaboration. She moonlights as a perfumer.
Cao Viet Nga
Cao Viet Nga is a film student and space manager. She has ten spicy levels, now she's at three.
Nguyen Duy Anh
Nguyen Duy Anh is a queer moving-image artist in Hanoi, Vietnam. Discovering himself through researches into the mainstream culture and film practices, his practice leans towards secluding subjects from their original contexts while interrogating other aspects such as identities, roles, values, and tragedies, in the needs of self-fictionalizing, self-liberating when charged under the outer directions and the normative gaze from power-upholding systems. The subject groups Duy Anh works with include queer people, women, adolescents, manual laborers and artists. Morphing ponderings into practices through different formats like documentaries, fictional films, video-music videos, he strives to push a distinctive signature in experimenting with visuals, sounds, actings, and narratives in filmmaking, storytelling.
From left to right: Kieu Anh, Thao Linh, Duy Anh, Nga.
With the collective way of working and being, other than the main members listed above, we would like to thank our friends and (sometimes are also our) partners & organizations who have been supporting us mentally, physically, and professionally throughout the years.
The names go as below, not in any order and shall continue forever: Tminh (Fatima Shalala), Gờ Rào, anh Biên, anh SơnX, Nguyễn Lê Đức Duy, chị Tường Linh, anh Nguyễn Quốc Thành (Queer Forever!), chị Đinh Nhung (Bàn Lộn-Vaginal Talks / Một Bảo Tàng Queer), Phương Tiện, Bam Hizal (Pangrok Sulap, MY), Arief “Atto” Widiarso (Serrum, ID), Hoi Leung (CCC)
along with Á Space, Nhà Sàn Collective, The Outpost, Manzi, Museum Technik, Long Bien Art Fair, Serrum Art Handling (ID), Pangrok Sulap (MY), Gudskul (ID), Sao La Collective, Then Cafe, Bến Tàu Ngầm, Nhat Q. Vo
To our previous collective members: Red (2019-2020), Minh-Hoang Nguyen (2021-2022), Trương Nguyễn Bảo Chung (2021-2023).
To our donors, of objects, labors and finance, whose support has greatly contributed to our sustainability in running the house of ba-bau AIR as well as our practice.
We greatly appreciate the expertise, emotional and experience that our friends and acquaintances share. The spirit of the collective precedes the founding of the collective