From boat people to painter

Born in Vietnam in 1971, Tuan Vu left his native country with his family in 1981, after two unsuccessful attempts. “Twice we went to prison. My father, a colonel in the American army, was imprisoned for 20 years. My mother organized the escape of boat people. She was imprisoned for six months. My grandmother took me in with my sisters and brothers. We lost everything, but we ended up fleeing by boat to Indonesia and then landed in Montreal. »

Saying he appreciated the “kindness of Quebecers,” Tuan Vu learned French in a reception class for immigrants. Then he joined the school system, learned English at university and ended up becoming an electrical engineer specializing in telecommunications. From 1996 he worked for companies like Ericsson and Cisco, installing software all over the world. “I even lived for a year in Sweden for Ericsson. »

He has always painted and drawn. When he was young, he drew the demons that populated his nightmares. Later he decorated interiors. Until a visual arts teacher from the Lucien-Pagé high school came to tell his mother that her son was gifted and that he should go into the arts. “But for me, at the time, art was madness and I especially loved science. »

Tuan Vu thus took the path of engineering while continuing to create, taking painting, art history and photography courses on the internet in the evening, after work.

In 2010, he realized that his art was popular when he organized an auction for Haiti, which had just been hit by an earthquake. By selling his paintings, he raised $7,000 for this cause. He then devoted himself to photography until he did his first solo painting at Livart, in Montreal, in 2021, in the middle of a pandemic.

“I painted so much at home during the pandemic that I no longer knew where to put my paintings. I looked for a place to exhibit as soon as the confinement was over and I rented the Livart for four days. I sold 90% of the paintings. That’s how it started. »