Van Tran Nguyen is a Vietnamese American artist-scholar, filmmaker, curator, and multimedia artist.

In 2017, Tran Nguyen received an MFA from the State University of New York, at Buffalo. Then in 2021, she earned her doctorate in the Philosophy of Electronic Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Tran Nguyen has exhibited artwork in many solo and group exhibitions; such as Shape of a Pocket (2017, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center), Strange Agency (2017, Buffalo Arts Studio), Paris, Orange County (2020, Lycoming College), Women in Film (2021, Singapore’s Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film) and, Futurities Uncertain (2022, Cornell Biennial) to name a few.

In 2016, Tran Nguyen and collaborator Natalie Fleming co-curated The Measure of All Things: Rethinking Humanism through Art at the University at Buffalo Department of Art Gallery. In 2017, Tran Nguyen and Fleming premiered their group exhibition Forging American: Art in the Workings of an Asian American Rust Belt at Big Orbit Project Space (CEPA Gallery) in Buffalo, New York. Their third curatorial project, Art Stands Still, focuses on the temporal effect of illness and disability on creative practice. Art Stands Still was exhibited in Troy, NY at Collar Works Gallery in May 2019. In 2022 Tran Nguyen was granted the Windgate Artist-In-Residence title which commissioned a new body of work (a 2022 solo exhibition titled, i can’t swim) through the Purchase Foundation.

Her research investigates Asian American performance and media(tions) of the diaspora. Tran Nguyen’s monograph-in-process, No Bodies Home: Mediations of Performance in Exile explores Cold War technological advancement and argues that racialized and gendered bodies of the Asian diaspora are the material and technological output of warfare. Her short film, ERIE COUNTY SMILE released in 2021, is available for public access via the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Her first full-length feature film, The MOTHERLOAD, will be released by 2026. She is an Early Career Fellow at the UCLA Center on Race & Digital Justice (2024-2025) and recipient of The Vilcek Foundation's 2024 New American Perspectives in Filmmaking grant. She joined Georgetown University in the fall of 2024 as the Assistant Professor of Performing Arts. Dr. Tran Nguyen teaches courses across theory and practice including digital filmmaking, Techno-Orientalisms, and autoethnography in performance.