VietNamNet Bridge – Using thread and ink to create a kind of armour for her calligraphic subjects, artist Tammy Nguyen's new body of work explores three dimensions in experimental ways, stretching and twisting her characters with cement and string.

Dismembered: Body, one of a series of art works inspired by anatomical images.

In the Position series, wooden altar pieces represent figures of a family. The parents overlook their children as they prepare to enter the great expansive ocean of the world.

Boldly formed in thick gestures of ink overlaid with loose black stitch work, these cherished young figures have unformed bodies of innocents. They are individual shrines of hope.

On another wall, the series called Untitled includes large-scale drawings in ink illustrating abstract landscapes.

Shapes like pincers, hands clutching knives, and substances dissolving through a sieve resemble scientific lab tests.

In the series titled Body, human anatomical images are digitally set onto silk.

These dismembered torsos and heads are creating their own threaded armour, remembering the hope that was set forth in their youth.

This process of maturity is seen as violent and explosive as Nguyen pulls and curls these siblings into renewed entities.

Mark-making has been at the centre of Nguyen's art. The gesture of the mark, its energy and speed, is central to her ideas of endurance.

Nguyen is inspired by the resilience of humanity, particularly the role of women in Vietnamese society and their negotiation of cultural tradition, social expectation and individual aspirations that are deemed problematic due to their gender.

Claiming the stitch and the brush as valid, important tools in her technical arsenal, she says that her experimentation with materials, such as cement and silk, is a search for balance between power and sensuality.

Though it may appear that she is influenced by Abstract Expressionism, she says that Chinese calligraphy and Islamic iconography have been much more important.

Born in 1984 and trained at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, Nguyen moved to HCM City on a Fulbright Grant in 2007 to continue studies in the traditional technique of lacquer and continues to live and work there.

San Art is Viet Nam's active independent art space operating as a non-profit, artist-run gallery space and reading room in HCM City.

San (meaning platform) Art promotes, cultivate and showcases contemporary art through exhibition and education, working with local and international artists.

It also collaborates with L'usine, a design-concept store in the heart of HCM City, in the creation of a project exhibition space for young local talent.

The exhibition at L'Usine, 151/1 Dong Khoi Street, District 1, HCM City ends on November 18.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News