Phan Nguyen: ManiQueer
ManiQueer, meaning “queer hands”, is artist Phan Nguyen’s long-term, on-going project that combines photography, video, personal archives, performance and installation. Starting from their own struggle with shame, internalised racism and class discrimination, Nguyen has created ManiQueer to work through and reclaim the stereotypes that have been attributed to them by the dominant cultures.
With ManiQueer, Nguyen has researched the notion of home-making through the actions of a nail salon – a practice that is specific to the Vietnamese diaspora. The manicure process in a nail salon was re-enacted by Nguyen in a series of performances in spring 2023, where they examined the space in relation to marginalised and racialised bodies of queer people.
Nguyen’s nail salon is here appropriated into a communal sanctuary for QTBIPOC* people, as a reply to the lack of such safe and enjoyable spaces in the society. QTBIPOC people, including those belonging to diaspora*, have to constantly negotiate between spaces and contexts, even to simply rest, tune into their bodies and feelings, or to find solace in joys and dreams. Their experiences and ways of being are centered in ManiQueer’s utopian space, as a soft form of resisting the colonial, cis- heteronormative gaze* through which they are most of the time read.
In the prints and the video work, Nguyen’s own memories merge with anecdotes told by other racialised queer migrants while receiving a manicure. Through manicure and dialogue, Nguyen has interwoven other people’s stories into their own personal archive, expanding it with shared, lived experiences. Moments of hand pampering and nail polishing are blurring the difference between the hands that give care and the hands that receive it.
The exhibition invites visitors to navigate through soft photographic prints on fabric into an installation piece that resembles a common pedicure setup of a nail salon. While drawing attention to the hierarchies of power and the labour of care in this setting, Nguyen has constructed the pedicure bowl to draw a parallel to the natural wells in northern Vietnam. As a communal and spiritual place for villagers, the traditional well bears witness to the life of the community. In this context, it is telling the stories of the artist and their community.
ManiQueer was initiated by Phan Nguyen in 2023 within UrbanApa residency program at Outo Olo gallery in Helsinki. The exhibition is supported by Kansan Sivistysrahasto and Kiila.
Phan Nguyen (they/them) is a Vietnamese visual artist working primarily with lens-based media and performance. Their practice seeks to examine the fluidity of memories, queerness, and belonging under socio-political lens.This exhibition was selected to be shown at the gallery of the Finnish museum of Photography through the open call of 2023-2024, with the theme ”Rebellious Body”.
*QTBIPOC is an acronym for Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Colour.
*Diaspora refers to populations, such as members of an ethnic or religious group, that originated from the same place but dispersed to different locations. In some situations, the word is used to discuss victimhood, imperialism or colonialism, expulsion or refuge. It can also be used when talking about trade, migration or immigration in pursuit of employment.
*Cis-heteronormative gaze refers to a way of looking at the world through ”the lens” of an understanding of gender and sexuality as normative. ’Cis’ refers to being cis gender, which means that a person identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth.
︎ Phan Nguyen
MANIQUEER
PVF 202431.1.–31.3.2024
The Finnish Museum of Photography - Gallery (0 floor)