Born in France in 1972 to Vietnamese parents from the boat people generation, Hom Nguyen first sold shoes before specializing in shoe patina. He developed a technique that he perfected in Japan with the great tattoo masters of the Shibuya district, in the center of Tokyo. On his return to France, he devoted himself to drawing and painting, and set up a studio in Bagnolet, a suburb of Paris.

Self-taught, lively, instinctive, Hom Nguyen articulates his work around the human figure and the complexity of trajectories. He has notably created portraits of legionnaires from the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, by definition stateless and rootless. He also runs a drawing workshop in the psychiatric department of the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.