Mai Nguye n-Long describes her Vomit Girl sculptures as ‘contemporary folkloric forms’ that address diasporic trauma in order to highlight new stories and meanings. Nguye n-Long was born in Tasmania to a Vietnamese father and an Australian mother, and while growing up in Papua New Guinea and the Philippines felt a conflicted sense of identity and belonging. Her playful sculptures draw on mistranslation and wordplay to confront ‘a sense of being erased: having no identity, language or voice to speak with’.

In The Vomit Girl Project 2024, the artist’s goddess of lost languages is accompanied by new folkloric works, including an elephant fairy, toads, mother cats, buffalo riders, mudskippers, manure collectors and other ambiguous and composite forms derived from nature-fertility motifs. Made from various clay types grounded in an earthenware sensibility – dark smooth grog clay with manganese and iron, terracotta clay with cellulose fibres, white raku clay and occasionally a lurid orange glaze – these captivating works create a refined, systematic and deeply engaging visual language.

In keeping with the evolving nature of her body of work, for the Asia Pacific Triennial Nguye n-Long has employed a new deep-blue glaze for some figures, and increased her use of brushwork to complement her unusual yet precise incising – undertaken using teeth and a porcupine quill. As a group, these fragile yet robust works demonstrate the artist’s skill with clay, a medium which allows her to forge new connections and associations as a form of decolonisation and creative resistance.