Phuong Nguyen: No Still Waters examines the entanglement of ornament, identity, and power through a sustained engagement with Orientalism and the aesthetics of chinoiserie. Working across oil painting, wood carving, ceramics, and weaving, Nguyen interrogates how Southeast Asian — particularly Vietnamese — femininity has been constructed as image, surface, and object of desire. Hybrid works hover between image and artifact, where ornament accumulates and interrupts rather than decorates, and bodies appear fragmented or partially obscured — caught between visibility and erasure.
