NHU XUAN HUA REINS AT HÔTEL DE LA LAUZIÈRE, ARLES
Nhu Xuan Hua commands center stage at Rencontres d’Arles 2025 with a haunting new exhibition. This exhibition remixes memory, diaspora, and visual mythology. Titled “Let the Horses Ride”, this solo show transforms the historic Hôtel de la Lauzière. It becomes a surreal, time-warped gallery where ghosts of the past ride into the future.
The Art of Recollection, Reimagined
Nhu Xuan Hua’s photographic tableaux are more than just images—they’re memory machines. By using a unique chromatic inversion technique mimicking photographic negatives, the artist distills family rituals into spectral compositions. As a result, these compositions capture fleeting moments. For instance, scenes from Vietnamese-French domestic life—weddings, holiday dinners, dance parties—are revisited with dreamlike intensity. However, these moments aren’t nostalgia; they’re acts of reassembly.
The exhibition, set inside the Hôtel de la Lauzière before its renovation, becomes a co-conspirator in Hua’s narrative. The building’s sixties wallpaper, dormant terrace, and retro fixtures echo the artist’s themes of temporal layering and haunted elegance. It’s a rare glimpse inside an architectural relic, reframed by Nhu Xuan Hua’s gaze.
From Fashion Fame to Personal Mythos
Once celebrated for her fashion photography, Nhu Xuan Hua now uses her lens to remove cultural identity. Her work, including Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory, confronts the politics of global roots. It also explores the beauty of heritage. Most importantly, a centerpiece of the exhibition is Hua’s poem a lyrical manifesto.
It not only promotes unbound imagination but also encourages resistance to erasure. Moreover, it pulses with the same disobedient spirit as her visuals. For example, in the poem, “undomesticated” horses leap off walls and memories shimmer like ancestral pearls.
Cultural Crossroads and Future Visions
Presented by Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard in collaboration with Éditions Louis Vuitton, the exhibition is both a love letter to heritage and a blueprint for cultural renewal. The Hôtel de la Lauzière is poised to become a creative hub under Surface Studio’s guidance. It sets the stage for Hua’s intimate revolution in storytelling.
With a roster of events during Arles 2025 and a pop-up Louis Vuitton bookstore, this exhibition offers an immersive experience. In this experience, art, history, and identity collide.
For anyone tracing the pulse of contemporary photography, Nhu Xuan Hua is the name to know. Let the Horses Ride is the story she’s telling now.
cover image credit: Madison at the wedding 2 (c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy galerie Anne-Laure Buffard
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One day when I was barely two my mom let me push her out of her bedroom. She was curious so she ran outside the house so she could watch me through the window. I climbed up on a chair by her vanity and started putting on her makeup. I loved playing dress up as a kid. Putting on my mom's sequin tube tops and high heeled shoes and then putting on a dance show in the lobby or the restaurant of the hotel/residence we lived in. It was the best childhood ever. Dress-up, dancing, playing with barbies, and drawing were my favorite things to do. I have not changed one bit today. If I am creating I am happy.
Now I am in Paris for the second time in my life and I am having a ball playing with my partner in crime Julien Crouigneau. We founded IRK Magazine together in 2015 and we are proud to collaborate with some amazing artists, and influencers.
We are also a photography duo under the pseudonym French Cowboy. We love to tell stories and create poetic images that are impactful.
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