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Vigit Hand Eye Worana hat 2024

Accession No.
2025.056a-c
Date Created
2024
Gallery location
Not on public display
Department
Contemporary Asian Art
Dimensions A
79 x 22 x 22cm
Media Category
Installation
Medium
Coarse clay fired to 1220 degrees Celsius (buff with dark speckled mottle); inserts: coarse clay (buff with dark speckled mottle) and terracotta
Place Created
Bulli
Credit Line
Commissioned for APT11. Purchased 2025 with funds from the De Deyne Family through the Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art Foundation

Mai Nguyễn-Long describes her Vomit Girl sculptures as ‘contemporary folkloric forms’, using mistranslation and wordplay to reflect on disconnection from identity and language. Inspired by carved wooden figures found in Vietnamese đình – communal houses central to village life – Nguyễn-Long reimagines the deities as hybrid clay creatures of her own invention. Infused with humour, ambiguity and personal mythology, these figures transform spiritual unease into resilience.

Two recurring visual motifs anchor the series. The doba (đình bombshell axis) references a village bell replaced with a bombshell, symbolising adaptation and survival. The coiled, sinuous worana (worm dragon snake) draws on the transformation of the Chinese dragon into a gentler Vietnamese aesthetic. Together, these motifs explore shifting cultural power and meaning, recasting inherited symbols through the artist’s own diasporic lens.
 

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© Mai Nguyễn-Long

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Stories featuring this object

A detail view of grotesque clay sculptures in bright orange and earth tones
APT11

Mai Nguyễn-Long: Vomit Girl

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Exhibitions featuring this object

A view of a sculptural work made out of glowing red forms, installed on a gallery wall

‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial’

Nov 2024 - Apr 2025

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