Mary Thi Nguyen is a local Vietnamese artist who received a Blacktown Arts Pat Parker Residency in 2019. She is also a part of our Open studio group of local artists.
Mary’s residency dealt with issues that Vietnamese women struggle with when they migrate here. With their limited English skills, they find jobs in the beauty and nail industry. This is an area of employment they think will allow expression of their beauty ideals. However, they are frequently exploited.
For this project, Mary visited a number of nail and beauty salons in Blacktown and Western Sydney to interview women. As no one was willing to speak, she focused on her own experience to create the works for this exhibition.
This is an exhibition of Mary’s work for the Pat Parker Residency and the Open studio.
The exhibition will be open from 4 September to 26 September 2020.
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Image: Pretty Nails from the series of works created for the Pat Parker Residency