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Vomit Girl Classic, wing ears, dog ears, fairy, wide eyes 2024

Accession No.
2024.481
Date Created
2024
Gallery location
On display in QAG Gallery 6
Department
Contemporary Asian Art
Dimensions A
42.5 x 22.5 x 23cm
Media Category
Installation
Medium
Coarse white raku clay fired to 1100 degrees Celsius, orange glaze
Place Created
Bulli
Credit Line
Commissioned for APT11. Purchased 2024. Queensland Art Gallery | 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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A view of works installed in a bright gallery space, including a series of sculptures installed on a circular plinth, with video works installed on the back wall
ASIA PACIFIC ART PAPERS

Việt Nam and the Asia Pacific Triennial

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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

Raja Ravi Varma's Laxmi 1894, printed by the Ravi Varma Press c.1910–20, garlanded with flowers for the official opening of 'The God of Small Things', QAG, September 2025 / © The artists / Photograph: N Umek, QAGOMA

'The God of Small Things'

Sep 2025 - Oct 2026

Other works from this Department

Artwork Heritage this artwork made of 99 life-sized replicas of animals: polystyrene, gauze, resin and hide, created in 2013-01-01

Heritage 2013

Artwork Seabird Habitats this artwork made of Linen (plainwoven warp-faced pick-up patterns, four-selvedged cloth), lead, hook, slide projection, created in 2022-01-01

Seabird Habitats 2022

Artwork Leaf fall this artwork made of Single-channel digital video on DVD: 14:14 minutes, looped, colour, stereo sound, subtitles, widescreen, created in 2008-01-01

Leaf fall 2008

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