The Bui Sisters – Mai and Julia Bui Ngoc
T he Bui Sisters are a Polish-French artistic duo composed of Mai Bui-Ngoc (b. 1981 in Warsaw) and Julia Bui-Ngoc (b. 1984 in Nice, France). They are interdisciplinary artists creating projects that span the realms of film, choreography, performance, museum art, architecture, and theater.
Julia Bui-Ngoc is a film and theater director, sculptor, dancer, choreographer, and founder of the Fan Dance School.
Mai Bui-Ngoc is an architect, cinematographer, and director, as well as a co-author of numerous architectural projects realized in Poland and the co-founder of the Bui-Pędowska Architects studio.
Together, they produce unique works of film, museum exhibitions, and theater, garnering numerous awards across various artistic fields. The Bui Sisters are considered among the most versatile artists of their generation, constantly exploring new forms of narrative and aesthetics, redefining the boundaries of contemporary art.
Youth and Education
T he Bui Sisters spent their childhood in France, where they began their education and kung fu training under their father’s guidance. The training adhered to the Shaolin school, in which their father himself was raised.
In 1994, Julia won the French Kung Fu Championship, earning a gold medal in the southern style and combat. Mai won the French Kung Fu Championship the following year, receiving gold medals in the northern and southern styles and a bronze in combat.
Their educational paths and interests developed in different directions:
- Mai graduated from College Jean Médecin in Sospel, France. In 1997, she received a scholarship to attend Felixstowe International College in England. She later studied at the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology (2000–2004), earning her Master of Science in Architecture in 2004. She also studied at École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture de Bretagne in Rennes and expanded her film knowledge at the Academy of Film and Television in Warsaw (2006–2008).
- Julia, after moving from France in 1995, attended the Ballet School in Łódź and the First Social High School in Warsaw. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2007–2011), earning a Master of Fine Arts with honors in Professor Kowalski’s “Kowalnia” studio. She has been associated with the Centre for Theatre Practices “Gardzienice” since 2003 and later studied film directing at the Wajda School (2020) and Warsaw Film School (2018), where she currently teaches.
Artistic Career
T he Bui Sisters began their artistic journey in museum art, presenting projects at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw under the curatorship of Fabio Cavallucci. Their first exhibitions took place there in 2010. The sale of their work „Ariadna” to the CCA’s museum collection allowed them to invest in film equipment, enabling their transition into video art.
Their first short film, Lucid Dream, won the Prix de la Découverte at the Chalon Tout Court festival in France (2010) and an award for Best Short Film at Off Plus Camera in Krakow. Their music video Popaganda for the band Łąki Łan was nominated for Best Music Video at the 2010 Yach Film Festival.
In 2018, the sisters received the „Young Poland” scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, which supported the production of their short film Świtezianka (2018), inspired by Adam Mickiewicz’s ballad. The film won numerous awards, including the Platinum Remi Award at WorldFest Houston, and was nominated for the Jan Machulski Award. It has also been included in Polish school curricula and is regularly screened at the Iluzjon Cinema in Warsaw.
Their subsequent short film, The Lord of the Woods, also received multiple awards. The sisters have created numerous acclaimed music videos for leading Polish artists such as Jakub Józef Orliński, Kayah, Justyna Steczkowska, Margaret, and Łąki Łan.
In 2024, the sisters experimented with artificial intelligence in their music video Utopce for the band Kosy, which won the Best AI Music Video Award at the Europe Music Awards and received nominations at the Polish Music Video Festival in Łódź and the AI Artist International Festival in Beijing.
Julia has also achieved success as a theater director, with productions like Babaryba – czyli kobieta po grecku (2008) winning the Grand Prix at the Dionysia Festival and other works being staged internationally. Mai has developed her career in architecture, contributing to award-winning projects like the International Congress Center in Katowice and the redevelopment of the area around the National Stadium in Warsaw.
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Fabio Cavallucci about the bui sister s
Fabio Cavallucci, (art critic, director of the Centre for Contemporary Art)
„To some extent, this is exactly what the Bui sisters have been doing for years in their videos and films: questioning the certainties of perception, playing with dimensions, genres, and the principles of Newtonian physics.
Julia Bui-Ngoc and Mai Bui-Ngoc, daughters of a Polish mother and a Vietnamese father, merge two seemingly distant experiences. Julia, connected with theater and dance, emerged from „Kowalnia”—the studio of Professor Grzegorz Kowalski at the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, which in the 1990s and later shaped many leading Polish artists.
Mai, after studying architecture, cinematography, and television, as well as pursuing an intensive career as an architect, embarked on a journey around the world lasting more than a year and a half.
Three years ago, the sisters formed a creative team working in art, theater, film, and advertising. Occasionally, they collaborate with other artists—in this case, with Jarek Jóźwik, a composer.
It seems that one of the main goals of their work is to challenge perceptual certainties—whether in music videos, where they depict characters as tiny Gullivers in the land of giants, or in theater, where actresses step one by one through a door and appear on a screen, blurring the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds.
Big and small, real and fake, high and low intermingle. Overhead shots often transform the bodies of models into puppets, rag dolls, or video game characters.
The Bui sisters also play with film genres. Noir atmospheres mix with scenes of passion, and rising suspense often leads to a dead end.
There are also advertising productions where the duo sometimes employs references, such as the circular, long takes reminiscent of Zbigniew Rybczyński.
From their works, the concept of theater emerges most prominently—the belief that we live in parallel worlds, and that from a reality seemingly the most dangerous and dramatic, we can easily slip into a puppet show or the fantastical realm of comics.”