Vân-Nhi Nguyễn
As You Grow Older
Mother Dearest
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©2025 Vân - Nhi Nguyễn
In this work: Tạ Lê Hạnh- Thơ, the sisters Vân Lê, Dan Ni, Thái Linh, Annica, Ronny Ackah, Vũ Khôi Nguyên, Bùi Nhật Minh, Jonathan Poirier, Vũ Thu Hương, Nguyễn Nhật Minh Châu, Nguyễn Hà Phong, Nguyễn Hiếu Ngọc, Xứng, Tường Danh
Flipping through the pages of one’s own family photo album is much of a revelation to myself - recognition of nostalgia for a time that passed, but also disconnection to its traditions, its pains and stereotypical ways of being perceived.
In the excess of pictures in today’s image-saturated world, where does the language of today's Vietnamese lie? I started to assemble a collection of images that is free from the western influence of buying, consuming - just images of textiles and patterns, floral and geometric in ways that express a person's inner desire to live in that world. Through staged, idealistic domestic pictures of my immediate friend group, and collages made from both stock images and my own photographs, I look into ways that I can create a world parallel to this through capitalistic tendencies, yet untethered, reflective of a photo album.
Elements of my photographic work draw from stacks of family photos, online dream journals and found images. Photographs of staged scenes that provoke a sense of seen-it-before, collages of tangled images suggest an infrastructure of dependence and support, but also a reanimation and an update, in which the people in it highlight the fact that dreaming forward has become nature to Vietnamese people.