About
Kim Thao
Lives and works in Munich
Where Being Persists
Born in Hanoi and raised in Munich, Kim Thao is a self-taught artist who began her practice in oil painting during the global pandemic. She holds a Master’s degree in Management and Technology from the Technical University of Munich, bringing a disciplined analytical background to her creative exploration of metaphysical questions.
Thao’s work is shaped by the masters of Renaissance and Baroque painting, as well as the Impressionist focus on atmosphere. She reinterprets traditional techniques through contemporary abstraction, often on a large scale, with light functioning as a central visual and conceptual element. Her paintings become spaces of reflection where light is rendered as a metaphysical force.
Since 2024, Thao’s practice has focused on figuration through anatomical studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, using the human body to explore identity, vulnerability, and intimacy. By blending precision with abstraction, she creates fragmented or obscured figures that lean into ontology, time, and being - referring to something invisible yet decisive. This inquiry is deeply rooted in Thao’s bicultural experience of "in-betweenness" between Vietnamese and German cultures.
Today, Kim Thao lives and works in Munich. Her practice continues to unfold as a dialogue between light, the human body, and the quiet complexities of cultural and emotional life, ultimately seeking to discover where being persists across the universe.
