Anh Duong

Biography

Anh Duong (born in Bordeaux in 1960) is a French-American artist, actress and model, best known for her self-portraits, which she treats as a kind of visual diary. The daughter of a Spanish mother and a Vietnamese father, she studied architecture in Paris and trained in classical dance before a modelling career brought her into the orbit of Vogue and designers such as Christian Lacroix and John Galliano.

In 1988 she moved to New York, where Julian Schnabel introduced her to the city's painting circles. Through the 1990s she worked in film as well, making her feature debut in The Mambo Kings in 1992 and appearing in Scent of a Woman, I Shot Andy Warhol and My Best Friend's Wedding. Her role in Lisa Cholodenko's High Art was shown at Cannes and Sundance. Later she played the mother of the lead character in Appropriate Behavior (2014).

Her painting centres on the self-portrait. Her first solo show at Sperone Westwater in 1991 included large canvases, and in 1999 Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris displayed more than sixty of her self-portraits. From 2003 she also worked in sculpture. She remains active, represented by galleries in New York and Europe.

Key films

• Scent of a Woman (1992)
• The Mambo Kings (1992)
• I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
• My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
• High Art (1998)
• Appropriate Behavior (2014)