“Art is vital for me. It is almost a religion. It means to believe in people, in life, in love. It is a response to what is beautiful and simple. As an artist I do what I do for no other purpose than to express my feelings.”– Tuan

Nguyen Tuan was born in Vietnam in 1963 to a family of wealth and privilege and learned volumes about balance after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Wealth had turned to poverty, privilege to oppression, and happiness to sadness; Tuan began to realize that one cannot exist without the other. Thirsting for freedom, Tuan’s first attempt to escape the Communist regime failed, he witnessed the death of his close friend, and was cast into a concentration camp. Tuan never gave up and was not broken, in fact, by utilizing his skills as a sculptor and clay from his cell floor, he was able to sculpt likenesses of his fellow inmates and his captors, expediting his release. Finally succeeding in fleeing Vietnam, Tuan eventually made it to the United States in 1989, where he embarked on a career as a sculptor with renewed energy and passion.