Boi Tran is one of the few outstanding Vietnamese female artists. Her style is influenced by her teacher, Trung Nguyen. She also worked as Nguyen’s model, serving as a source of creative inspiration for the artist. Boi Tran’s Elegant in Hue trilogy is presented in a classical European triptych form. They depict a group of beautiful goddesses strolling, sitting and dancing in a glorious garden. The composition of the piece is extraordinary and spectacular.
Publications
“Mother and Children” fetched approximately USD 10,000 at Christie’s Hong Kong on May 26, 2013. Boi Tran is only the second Vietnamese female painter, the other being Le Thi Luu (1911 – 1988), selected by the two prestigious international auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
In 2017, through the VTV8 feature The Elegance Of Hue Continues At Boi Tran Garden, Boi Tran Garden appeared not as spectacle, but as a lived continuation of Hue itself, where garden paths, old houses, paintings, ceramics, and silence formed a single cultural atmosphere.
The 2015 HUE TV (TRT) documentary on Artist Boi Tran approached Hue not as spectacle, but as atmosphere, a world shaped by painting, memory, cuisine, feminine resilience, and the slow poetry of daily life on Thien An Hill. At Boi Tran Garden, art was never separated from existence. Old houses, winding garden paths, paintings, ceramics, and silence formed a living continuity rather than a reconstruction of the past.
Boi Tran is not only a distinguished Vietnamese artist and garden architect, but also a gifted cook. To be received by her in the former imperial city of Hue is both a pleasure and a discovery. Within a secluded garden of lotus ponds and wooden architecture, everything has been shaped by her own hand. Here, cooking becomes more than craft; it is an extension of life, rooted in the refined traditions of Hue and guided by balance, precision, and memory. What emerges is not simply a meal, but a quiet harmony, where art, space, and gesture come together as one.
The path of art is vast and endless. It always urges us to work and create without rest. For painter Boi Tran, when holding a brush, a palette knife, or a pen, all can become works of art. And this garden is also a work that she cherishes. It has no boundary between surrealism and realism. And that is exactly the artistic path that she has chosen.
Many of the old culinary traditions live on, and today, Hue cuisine is held to be Vietnam’s most delicious and diverse. A visit to Ancient Hue, a home restaurant and gallery of an eccentric, elegant artist and chef Boi Tran, gives visitors an inkling of what a royal banquet and a meal crafted.
Writing on Hue, John Krich pauses in Boi Tran’s garden, where the light disappears before the first course. What emerges in its place is not darkness, but a different clarity, one in which the meal is no longer seen, but recognised.
There are places where history is told, and others where it is quietly kept. Hue belongs to the latter. When Anthony Bourdain came to film for his show Parts Unknown aired on CNN, what emerged was not a story of food, but of memory made tangible. At Boi Tran Garden, a meal unfolds alongside architecture, ritual and the residue of time. Flavours do not seek intensity, but balance; gestures do not display, but endure. In such a place, taste becomes a language through which the past continues to live.
Boi Tran Garden is proud to document a brief footage by ZDF German Television Broadcaster, featuring the gracefulness of Boi Tran’s art, cuisine and architecture at Boi Tran Garden
