During a transformative residency at A.Farm Saigon, multidisciplinary artist Thom Nguyen unveils a provocative new body of work. Seamlessly merging global art history with the vibrant realities of modern Vietnam, Nguyen explores gender fluidity as a brilliant, unapologetic act of resistance.
In a society where queer narratives have often been obscured or left unnamed, Nguyen’s practice becomes an act of reclamation. This sensibility is poignantly expressed in his portrait of Xuân Diệu, the revered Vietnamese poet whose queer identity is rarely acknowledged within mainstream literary discourse. Nguyen places the poet inside a glass box, partially submerged in water, creating a striking image of suspended breath. It becomes a quiet yet powerful metaphor for the pressure many marginalized individuals face when asked to conceal their truth in order to survive.
At the heart of the exhibition is a series of portraits featuring queer Saigonese individuals, from established artists and cultural figures to local drag icons and emerging voices. With a freewheeling yet precise sensibility, Nguyen reinterprets Western art history through a distinctly queer and Asian lens. A local creative is reimagined as Saint Sebastian, while the voluptuous drag icon Babel reclines with the sensual poise of Ingres’s Grande Odalisque. Elsewhere, an A.Farm resident floats gracefully in a local swimming pool, recalling Millais’s Ophelia.
These references are never treated as untouchable monuments. Instead, Nguyen approaches the classical canon as living material, something to be questioned, softened, reconfigured, and made newly intimate. His works do not merely borrow from art history; they rewrite it, making space for Vietnamese queer bodies within visual traditions that have long excluded them.
Water emerges as the exhibition’s most evocative current. Through the artful use of epoxy resin, several paintings appear physically submerged, their surfaces taking on a polished, almost jewel-like depth. This liquid quality draws the viewer closer, inviting a more contemplative gaze beneath the surface. Water becomes at once a symbol of concealment, cleansing, transformation, and release.
Nguyen’s multidisciplinary vision extends beyond the canvas. In a series of custom silk jumpsuits, he depicts H₂O in its shifting states, from clouds and rain to ice. These motifs are unified within fluid, unisex silhouettes that resist prescribed gender boundaries. Here, fashion becomes more than adornment. It becomes a language of movement, self-definition, and quiet defiance.
Elsewhere, traditional stamps and scrolls are used with sharp humor to question how bodies and identities are categorized from birth. By turning familiar cultural forms into instruments of critique, Nguyen reveals the absurdity of rigid classification while preserving a spirit of wit and play.
What makes Thom Nguyen’s exhibition so compelling is its ability to hold gravity and joy in the same frame. Drawing from Vietnamese literature, Buddhist mythology, European painting, fashion, and queer culture, his works remain intellectually layered yet emotionally direct. Through fluid forms and bold acts of reinterpretation, Nguyen creates a space where visibility becomes power. His art reminds us that honesty, pleasure, tenderness, and self-expression can all be revolutionary.