Living Exhibition opens Vietnam Festival of Creativity & Design 2026

The exhibition marks the start of the seventh edition of the Vietnam Festival of Creativity & Design (VFCD), a week-long series organised by RMIT University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City in collaboration with a diverse array of individuals, groups, organisations, enterprises in the creative industries.

Reflecting VFCD’s theme “Living Festival”, the exhibition moves beyond presenting completed works as fixed outcomes. Instead, it creates space for creative processes to continue unfolding. Throughout the festival, works may be made, altered, activated, performed, experienced or reinterpreted, inviting audiences to become participants in the exhibition’s ongoing development.

From Living Exhibition to Living Festival

The Living Exhibition sets the tone for a week of VFCD 2026’s activities under the theme Living Festival.

Following six annual editions between 2019 and 2024, VFCD returns in 2026 with a new biennial model with nearly 40 activities that connect creativity, research and community participation.

The Living Festival theme approaches creativity as something dynamic – continuously adapting, evolving and taking shape through relationships between people, ideas, disciplines and places.

Speaking at the exhibition launch and VFCD opening event, Professor Donna Cleveland, Dean of the School of Communication & Design at RMIT Vietnam, highlighted the School’s role in bringing different parts of the creative ecosystem together.

“As we open VFCD 2026 today, I would like to reaffirm RMIT University and the School of Communication & Design's commitment to this journey. We see ourselves as a convenor that brings together practitioners, students, researchers, businesses, cultural organisations, and communities. We hope to strengthen relationships across the creative ecosystem while linking Vietnam's creative community with regional and international networks."

Rethinking how an exhibition is made

The Living Exhibition proposes an alternative model of exhibition-making. Rather than selecting works solely through curatorial judgement, submissions went through a rigorous double-blind peer-review process, with works independently assessed by multiple international reviewers. This approach brings different perspectives into the selection process and creates a more transparent and critically informed basis for shaping the exhibition.

The selected works are organised across four interconnected sub-tracks: Living Archives, Living Signals, Living Territories, and Living Communities. These operate as conceptual points of connection rather than fixed classifications, enabling diverse practices.

Associate Professor Lim Kok Yoong, Director of VFCD 2026 and Deputy Dean for Research and Innovation at RMIT Vietnam’s School of Communication & Design, said this combination of curation, research and experimentation is what sets VFCD apart.

“VFCD is neither solely an arts festival nor an institutional or commercial industry event. It occupies a distinctive space between education, research, culture, industry and public life. Its curatorial and peer-review processes allow VFCD to support experimentation and emerging practices while maintaining intellectual, academic rigors and creative freedom.”

The VFCD 2026 program is structured around five interconnected tracks, bringing together exhibitions, forums, laboratories, workshops, fieldwork and partner-led activities across the city. Together, they connect creative practice with critical enquiry, education with professional practice, research with public participation, and local knowledge with international exchange.

Explore the VFCD 2026 event calendar: https://vfcd.events/schedule/.

Register here: https://vfcd.events/registration.

Story: Lam Luong