Bodies (The Lovers)
2024
Aluminium, mesh fabric, textile silicone, foam
Installation view Fallen Angels, Grotto, Berlin, 2024
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 by Do Tuong Linh