OUR VISION
A brief overview of the project’s aims and how Tracing Kiều connects past and present through creative practice.
Tracing Kiều is an independent, diaspora-led initiative reimagining Vietnam’s most celebrated literary classic, The Tale of Kiều (Truyện Kiều), written by Nguyễn Du in the early 19th century. The project’s title gestures both to Thúy Kiều, the poem’s heroine, and to the Việt kiều, the Vietnamese diaspora. At its heart lies a question: How can a 19th-century epic resonate in a fragmented, global 21st century?
Through an anthology, exhibition with discursive program, and expanding digital platform, the project brings together written and artistic contributions by creatives of Vietnamese heritage worldwide – works that respond to, reimagine, dialogue with, or critically confront Kiều. Together they open the text as a shared space for artistic creation, reflection, and cross-cultural exchange. A curatorial framework connects these diverse voices across artistic, literary, and scholarly contexts.
Audiences include Vietnamese communities in Vietnam and the diaspora, wider migrant and artistic publics, and those interested in literature, diaspora, and translation.
Last updated: [November 16, 2025]
Why Kiều, Why Now?
An introduction to the poem’s long history of reinterpretation and its relevance for contemporary diaspora perspectives.
For over two centuries, The Tale of Kiều has been recited, contested, and celebrated. The story of Thúy Kiều – a young woman renowned for her beauty, talent, and passion – follows her 15-year odyssey through separation, hardship, and transformation before her eventual return. Written in verses of extraordinary lyricism and imagery, the poem endures as both a cultural touchstone and a classic of world literature. Like Shakespeare’s plays or Goethe’s Faust, it raises moral, political, and human questions that remain alive across generations.
From the start, the poem provoked debate: admired at court yet censured by Confucian moralists, later taken up by reformers, revolutionaries, and modernists, each reading it through the lens of their time. The poem’s themes mirror Vietnamese histories of rupture, survival, and renewal, and its ethical and emotional terrain – bridging Confucian and Buddhist thought – adds to its lasting spiritual and philosophical resonance. Its influence remains vivid in Vietnam today, where writers, artists, and musicians continue to reinterpret it. Yet despite translations into more than 20 languages, Kiều is still little known outside Vietnam beyond specialist circles.
Across the Vietnamese diaspora, writers, artists, and filmmakers are gaining new recognition, shaping contemporary conversations in literature, art, and media. It is a timely moment to bring these voices into dialogue, linking their work with Kiều’s long cultural afterlife and connecting diaspora experiences with the poem’s heritage. Tracing Kiều carries the text into contemporary global contexts, where it can be read, questioned, and reinterpreted anew.
Against this backdrop, Tracing Kiều looks both backward and forward: it acknowledges layered histories of displacement and movement, while (re-)turning to Kiều as a living text – one that anchors artistic innovation, critical reflection, and transcultural dialogue.
Our Approach
How Tracing Kiều brings together creative practice, community dialogue, and cultural exchange across borders.
Tracing Kiều grows out of the lived experience of the Vietnamese diaspora. Led from Berlin, the project centers Vietnamese and Vietnamese-heritage voices as curators, creators, and interpreters of cultural knowledge. It broadens global conversations about Kiều by foregrounding perspectives that have not always been part of earlier discussions. It welcomes a wide spectrum of contributors – from first-generation migrants to later generations, mixed-heritage creatives, adoptees, and Vietnam-based artists – reflecting how connections to heritage may be embedded, distant, or rediscovered.
The project embraces an equally broad spectrum of creative experience, from established practitioners to emerging voices, inviting Kiều’s resonances to unfold through multiple perspectives. It cultivates a shared space where different generations, disciplines, and relationships to the poem meet and shape the project together.
Tracing Kiều adapts the folk practice of bói Kiều – consulting verses at random – as a creative method. Opening the book to a chance passage can spark a new work, frame a character, or resonate with an already existing project. This approach continues the poem’s long history of playful and serious reinterpretation. It also lends itself to workshop and discussion formats, inviting collective reading, cultural translation, and reinterpretation.
Multi-Genre, Multi-Platform
An outline of how the project invites engagement across writing, art, performance, and digital tools.
Tracing Kiều unfolds across interconnected formats – anthology, exhibition, discursive program, and digital platform – linked by shared themes and collaboration among participants.
Thematic Dialogues
Orientational themes that open up Kiều’s concerns around longing, transformation, power, and return.
Thematic dialogues offer orientation, echoing Kiều’s 15-year odyssey while opening wider questions of diaspora and human experience. They serve as starting points and can overlap within individual works.
Berlin as Anchor
Why Berlin serves as the project’s current home and a bridge between Vietnamese, diasporic, and transnational cultural spaces.
As the primary base of the project team and the setting for the exhibition, Berlin is a uniquely resonant site. The city’s own histories of division and reunification mirror Vietnamese histories of rupture and reconciliation. Berlin’s Vietnamese communities – from former contract workers in the East to refugee networks in the West, as well as students, academics, professionals, and mixed families – provide vital audiences and collaborators.
At the same time, Berlin’s vibrant artistic networks and wider migrant communities situate Vietnamese perspectives within a broader field of transcultural exchange. This makes the city an evocative place to launch Tracing Kiều, develop the discursive program, and connect to global partners and publics.
A Resonant Space
How the project creates space for reinterpretation, dialogue, and contemporary relevance.
Rooted in Berlin yet oriented outward, Tracing Kiều opens a wider space where Kiều can be reimagined through contemporary creative practice. Linking a 19th-century epic with 21st-century diasporic creativity, the project cultivates a resonant context for artistic innovation, reflection, and shared learning. It brings together contributors to engage with The Tale of Kiều through reimagining, translation, and debate – treating creative practice as a way of exploring history, identity, and belonging.
Building on the poem’s enduring relevance, the project explores themes such as resilience, moral choice, and the tension between fate and agency – bringing them into dialogue with contemporary diasporic perspectives and wider global contexts. Through creative and dialogic formats, Tracing Kiều connects these concerns to broader questions of identity, memory, and belonging, renewing the poem’s resonance for our century.
Centering creative response, community dialogue, and public-facing programming, the project links artistic, academic, and community perspectives. It foregrounds diasporic voices – intergenerational, multilingual, and globally situated – and invites audiences to encounter Kiều as a living text within contemporary cultural discourse.