Elaine Nguyen
Jade: Protection & Permanence , 2024
Video
A 4-minute and 6-second video of an overhead view of a person washing oranges over a turquoise bowl in a sink. In the background, a man sings karaoke. The person soaps up their hands and attempts to put on a jade bracelet. Ice water fills the bowl, and then a child puts her hand in the ice water. The adult attempts to help the child soap up her hands and put the jade bracelet on. After many tries, they finally get the jade bracelet on the child’s wrist, and they both rinse their hands under the faucet and then dump the soapy water out of the bowl.
Biography Elaine Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American interdisciplinary artist exploring identity, displacement, and the search for home as a perpetual foreigner. She is drawn to the passage of time and light...
Biography
Elaine Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American interdisciplinary artist exploring identity, displacement, and the search for home as a perpetual foreigner. She is drawn to the passage of time and light and utilizes ephemeral materials to convey memory and yearning. Her work expands across painting, cyanotype, sculpture, and time-based media. Through cyanotypes and long exposures, she captures the fluidity and blurriness of memory and through her use of text, both poetic and linguistic, she navigates vulnerability and relearning language. Nguyen seeks to reconnect with her Vietnamese heritage, reclaiming symbols and creating community through shared experiences. Through durational walking performances and site-specific work, she acknowledges the transitory and cyclical nature of seeking belonging as the works evoke timeless, placeless displacement.