Born 1975, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City

In Nguyễn Thi Châu Giang’s experience, women in Vietnam have been culturally defined as an archetype, expected to be beautiful, strong and subservient. Nguyễn’s works expose the duality of these social conventions by visually expressing the otherwise unacknowledged experiences and characteristics of the women in her own life. Since 2008, she has focused on silk painting, portraying the physical and psychological dichotomy she perceives by painting female figures on the front and back of the silk. These double-sided paintings suggest the boundaries between public and private lives and the fragile balance of appearances.

Nguyễn has devoted her works in APT10 to grandmothers, mothers, sisters and female friends, exhibiting a triptych and a diptych showing three generations of women, from her grandmother’s time to her own. The entwining of the visible and invisible, light and dark, is accentuated through these compositions, which include traditional and contemporary dress and symbolic elements such as flowers and dragons.