“When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?” — Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019) Marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, Only your name is a group exhibition featuring new and recent work by artists of Vietnamese descent Hoa-Dung Clerget, Vicky Đỗ and Duong Thuy Nguyen. The exhibition follows the journey of Vietnamese people migrating to the UK from 1975 onwards, preserving history through a Vietnamese lens and reflecting on the contemporary diaspora. Presented by SLQS Gallery in Shoreditch, the exhibition...
“When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?” — Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019)
Marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, Only your name is a group exhibition featuring new and recent work by artists of Vietnamese descent Hoa-Dung Clerget, Vicky Đỗ and Duong Thuy Nguyen. The exhibition follows the journey of Vietnamese people migrating to the UK from 1975 onwards, preserving history through a Vietnamese lens and reflecting on the contemporary diaspora. Presented by SLQS Gallery in Shoreditch, the exhibition is situated close to Hackney’s Kingsland Road, also known as the ‘Pho Mile’, where many Vietnamese families settled from the late 1970s. A video essay by Vicky Đỗ revisits the history of Vietnamese refugees arriving in Hong Kong. Duong Thuy Nguyen’s embossed aluminium and wax sculptures reinterpret Joan Wakelin’s 1989–90 photographs of Vietnamese refugees held in Hong Kong detention centres (featured in the V&A Collection). Hoa-Dung Clerget presents installations and sculptural works that consider the labour and lives of immigrant women and the Nail Art subculture, drawing on personal diasporic experience and the reconstruction of identity.
