The Kiều Constellation. A living map of the diasporic and transnational vectors connecting contributors to The Kiều Complex, The Kiều Reader, and the Kiều Salon. Currently spanning 17 countries, growing as the project develops.
Exhibition proposal · In development
THE PROJECT
How can a 200-year-old poem resonate with the Vietnamese diaspora today?
Tracing Kiều takes that question as its starting point.
Tracing Kiều is an independent art and literary initiative in dialogue with The Tale of Kiều, (Truyện Kiều, Nguyễn Du, c. 1820) – widely regarded as Vietnam’s most celebrated literary work and one of the great epics of world literature.
Led from Berlin, the initiative brings together artists, writers, scholars, and cultural practitioners from the Vietnamese diaspora and from Vietnam, working across contemporary art, literature, performance, and critical discourse.
The name holds a resonance: in Vietnamese, Thúy Kiều – the epic’s protagonist – Việt kiều – a term sometimes used for the Vietnamese diaspora – and cầu kiều – bridge – share the same sound, though each carries a different origin. The echo is accidental, but it resonates throughout the project. The project takes this proximity as its premise: the poem, the diaspora, and the possibility of connection between them are its subject, its method, and its form.
The project unfolds across multiple strands: The Kiều Complex (a proposed contemporary art exhibition), the Kiều Salon (a public program of talks, readings, and performances); and The Kiều Reader (an anthology and critical companion). Separately, the volunteer-run reading series Kiều Lesen – Reading Kiều takes place in Berlin in fall–winter 2026.
Where things stand
- The Kiều Reader: The open call closed in early 2026. Submissions are under review alongside a series of expert interviews, and a few further contributions, including texts in German, are being invited directly.
- The Kiều Complex: In development, with a funding application pending for a presentation in Berlin in 2027.
- Kiều Lesen – Reading Kiều: Volunteer-run reading series at parallelgesellschaft × Galerie Nord, September to December 2026.
The Kiều Complex
A proposed exhibition with artists from the Vietnamese diaspora
The Kiều Complex is a proposed group exhibition with around 16 artists from the Vietnamese diaspora, spanning four generations and nine countries.
The exhibition uses The Tale of Kiều as an analytical instrument: the poem opens new readings of the works, and the works open new readings of the poem.
The poem follows Thúy Kiều, a gifted young woman who sells herself to save her family, lives through 15 years of hardship and separation, and finally returns on her own terms. Constraint and agency, loss and transmission, rupture and belonging are tangled together in it. The works take up these tensions in their form and structure as well as their themes.
Four thematic fields drawn from the poem’s verses – Form & Fate, Transaction & Agency, Rupture & Rumor, and Ritual & Return – inform the exhibition’s curatorial logic. Curatorial interventions throughout the exhibition open points of entry for visitors encountering the epic or the history of the Vietnamese diaspora for the first time.
The exhibition is accompanied by the Kiều Salon, bringing even more voices from the global Vietnamese diaspora to a diverse public (see below).
The project starts in Berlin for a reason. Few European cities hold as many layers of Vietnamese migration: students sent to East and West Germany from the 1950s on, refugees taken in after 1975, and contract workers recruited to the GDR from 1980. These histories still shape Berlin’s Vietnamese community, the largest in Germany.
A presentation in 2027 would mark 70 years since Hồ Chí Minh’s visit to the GDR in 1957, a milestone in East German–Vietnamese relations; close to fifty years since the boat people exodus of 1978–79; and 35 years since the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom of 1992.
Kiều Salon
A public program of talks, readings, performances, and screenings
The Kiều Salon is a public program in development: a modular series of talks, lecture-performances, readings, concerts, and film screenings at different venues. Events take place before, during, and beyond the exhibition.
It is multilingual and multigenerational, and brings artists, scholars, community practitioners, and visitors into one room. Its subject is the Vietnamese diaspora as a global formation shaped by colonial history, displacement, and life across borders.
The Kiều Reader
A hybrid publication of poetry, essays, interviews, and artworks
The Kiều Reader is an anthology in development. It brings together literary, artistic, and discursive work from the Vietnamese diaspora and from Vietnam that takes up The Tale of Kiều in theme or form.
Contributions come from an international open call and from direct invitation, alongside a series of interviews with scholars on topics related to the poem.
The Reader follows the same four fields as the exhibition: Form & Fate, Transaction & Agency, Rupture & Rumor, and Ritual & Return. It is primarily in English, with Vietnamese, German, French, and other original languages in selected contributions.
The Reader is conceived as a standalone book with its own editorial line and international circulation, linked to the exhibition but not dependent on it.
Planned format: 250–300 pages, full color.