Born in Hanoi, Vietnam but raised in Berlin, Germany, Tra My Nguyen's recollections of childhood in Vietnam transform into a hybrid narrative where journeys through the streets of Hanoi spark reflections on colorism, mobility, and gender politics. Inspired by the culture of female motorists in Vietnam—who wear bright, mismatched garments to shield their skin from the sun—Nguyen reimagines these mass-produced clothes as both symbols of identity and objects of transformation.

In her Bodies (The Lovers) textile-sculpture series, Nguyen manipulates motorcycle garments using digitization and flat-bed scanning to create distorted, hybrid textiles. These pieces, housed in aluminium trays reminiscent of museum archive boxes, preserve the garments in a suspended, hollow form. Through this recontextualization, Nguyen's work meditates on preservation, transcendence, and the transformation of bodies over time, asking which "lovers" are being immortalised and how bodies—through time, memory, and technology—are continuously reshaped. Echoing Joan Copjec’s ideas of the body as a site of desire and subjectivity that resists full symbolic capture, Nguyen’s reimagined garments transcend their original function, gesturing toward a body that exceeds social constructs, transforming into new forms beyond their everyday use.

Text courtesy of Do Tuong Linh