Elaine Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American interdisciplinary artist exploring identity, displacement, and the search for home. She uses ephemeral materials, cyanotypes, and long exposures to capture the fluidity of memory and the passage of time, incorporating poetic and linguistic text to navigate vulnerability. Through her work, she seeks to reconnect with her heritage, reclaim symbols, and create community.
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 as the works evoke timeless, placeless displacement.