Bird Song is a sculptural project exploring the aesthetic, cultural and social dynamics of Vietnamese nail salon artists. Geographic, social and cultural confluences shape my practice. Through my investigations into material culture, I frequently utilize everyday objects that not only hold familial meaning but have global associations with class, race, gender and power.
On my travels through Germany this summer, I began commissioning Vietnamese nail salon artists to paint acrylic nails for my new Bird Song project. During each salon session, I would speak and tell stories with the artist-technicians. The nails were then attached to boxing gloves that I have partially covered in eggshells. This choice of material stems my experiments, beginning in 2016, with the often-overlooked traditional Vietnamese craft of sơn mài lacquer ware.
In some ways, my Bird Song project began as a way to highlight the tenuous creative labor of our Vietnamese sisters, brothers, aunties and uncles, blurring the line between “service technician/worker” and “artist”. The boxing gloves and stories are becoming a visual song about survival, labor, family and culture. Each individual nail pierces through the surface of the boxing gloves like the vibrant plumage of a bird. It inspired my teenage daughter to paint some nails with me, contributing to our multi-generational Việt Kiều history.
2025 marks a solemn fifty years since the Fall of Saigon and the end of a horrific war. Through this project, I hope to share and celebrate the resilience and creativity of the Vietnamese diaspora, particularly the individual and collective strength of Vietnamese women.
The title was prompted by “Torch Song”, a poem by the She Who Has No Master(s) Vietnamese diaspora womxn collective:
as we see ourselves and the other
thus we contain the starry heaven
passing along
a mythic birdsong
The Bird Song participatory project made its debut in August of 2024 at the NOVILLA center for art and cultural exchange in Berlin. My plan is to continue developing it and travel to nail salons across the United States until all 504 nails have been painted and the stories of their creators have been shared. My work seeks to redress the oversight and erasure of Asian American experiences and stories, making visible the intersecting challenges, hazards and triumphs of the Vietnamese diaspora that collective memory has obscured.
