About

Short Biography

Born in Tasmania to a Vietnamese father and an Australian mother (author of Arts of Viet Nam: 1009-1945), Mai Nguyễn-Long grew up in Papua New Guinea and the Philippines; as an adult she lived in Australia, China, and Vietnam. This trajectory of experiences during times of social and political upheaval continue to shape Mai’s sense of belonging. An acute sense of absence and disconnect informed her early academic commitments including Asian Studies, Art History, and Museum Studies. These experiences led to her work with an international health organization, becoming a 1999 Australian Youth Ambassador for Development with the Ministry of Health in Fiji. Since 1996 Mai has exhibited across a range of mediums including painting, drawing, media, mixed media sculptures and installation. It was a residency in the Hanoi ceramics village of Bat Trang that introduced Mai to clay. She is now undertaking a PhD program with her thesis titled Vomit Girl Beyond Diasporic Trauma: Interconnecting Contemporary Art and Folkloric Practices in Vietnam (AGRTP scholarship). Mai’s Vomit Girl (Berlin Cluster) and a newly commissioned Specimen (Permeate) were exhibited at the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art from 11^th June to 18^th September 2022 with support from the Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW. Vomit Girl iterations were represented in the 2022 Sydney Contemporary Artist Profile space curated by 3:33 Art Projects, and Vigit Moc Mac (Dispersal) was a finalist in the 2022 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. She lives and works in Dharawal country, Bulli.

Description of past and current art practice

Mai’s first exhibitions were held in Manila and Hanoi, but her career really gained currency with her first Australian solo at Bellas Gallery, Queensland (1996-98). Working in oil on canvas, her imagery could be described as ‘metaphysical landscapes’ morphing across time and physical space with a kind of organic disconnectedness. While Mai briefly worked with installation and mixed media with her exhibitions at The Australia Centre Gallery Manila, titled Transit Lounge (Arrivals-Departures) (1996), and E Chong: A Bilingual Installation with Incorrect Translations at Hanoi University of Fine Arts (1996), painting dominated her practice for the next ten years.

Moving to Sydney and showing with the Ray Hughes Gallery, Mai’s imagery changed dramatically. These paintings were more consciously figurative within surreal settings that overlaid stereotypical Australian culture with Asian icons such as koi and waterscapes as their unifying element.

It was a commission for Casula Powerhouse in 2006, for their touring exhibition I Love Pho, however, that set the next chapter and direction in the work. Mai returned to installation and the 3-dimensional form using the dog as a metaphor for cultural exploration and her Australian-Vietnamese identity. Pho Dog, comprised of 12 mongrel dog forms crafted from papier-mache sporting colourfully decorated – and culturally alert – skins and displayed on a reflective acrylic mirror grid. Drawn to the medium for its deceptive innocence, and to salute Southeast Asian folk crafts, it also tapped into contemporary concerns of recycling and reuse. The shared traumas at conflicted intersections expressed by Pho Dog expressed were further explored by Mai in the performance / installation piece, The Burning of Godog performed for the opening of the celebrated exhibition Nam Bang! curated by Dr Boitran Huynh-Beattie for Casula Powerhouse (2009).

While the dog has become a cultural trigger for Mai – and for those reading her work – equally it explores narratives that are extremely personal and self-reflective. These ideas have been played out in Mai’s exhibitions Aqua Mutt: an Installation with Dag Girl at Victoria’s Incinerator Arts Complex (2007), Godog & the Ascension of Dag Girl (2008) and True Blue Doggie Morph (2010) with NG Art Gallery, and most recently in Drift for Wollongong Art Gallery’s Generations exhibition (2011).

Parallel to this practice, and a pivotal component to these later exhibitions, Mai has shown her drawings – visual and textual hybrids that float on the page with great dexterity and intensity. Mai’s compulsion for story-telling – despite its abstraction – has become core to her practice. This has been drawn out most recently in a collaboration with the artist / performer William Yang Stories East and West (2010) presented at Performance 4A and Belvoir Theatre, Sydney; and a collaborative project with Indonesian artist FX Harsono and professional curatorium on the project In Memory of a Name for the Sydney Festival project Edge of Elsewhere, presented at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (2012).

In 2014 Mai was commissioned by Wollongong Art Gallery to present a major solo show in Gallery 1.  The project was curated by international arts writer and curator Gina Fairley and bridged over 15 years of Mai’s practise.  Beyogmos synthesized Mai’s intensely personal navigations through abstruse political landscapes.  The exhibition was an exploration of place, memory and beyond as Mai questioned constructs of identity, ambitiously drawing on a range of mediums (painting, drawing, light box, object-based installation, sculpture, new media) and the irreconcilable tension across layered and fractured realities.  Following this, in 2015 Mai’s charcoal animation Beyogmos was re-exhibited, this time installed with Layered Transitions, at Mosman Art Gallery’s contemporary art space The Cube.

In the studio, despite a parallel strand of Mai’s work continuing to explore organic and less figurative forms (Spirit Map series), a Vomit Girl series appeared in her end of 2014 Neat Severances commercial solo show and the series continues today.  The compulsively vomiting figure is articulating an inarticulate sense of loss, sadness, conflicted loyalties, anger, confusion, and powerlessness to act, speak about, or identify un/certain points of injustice. Unpacking this mute space has informed her current Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA) project. Mai’s character Vomit Girl inspired the subject of her PhD research, titled Vomit Girl Beyond Diasporic Trauma: Interconnecting Contemporary Art and Folkloric Practices in Vietnam.

Late 2014 and 2015 Mai returned to Hanoi for a 2-month and 3-month residency periods. CICF Copyright Agency funded a 5-week residency in the ceramic village of Bat Trang, whilst ACCA Viet independent curatorial group funded her 10-day residency in Muong Studio Hoa Binh province. She became President of Vietnam Centre – Australia Chapter in 2018, stepping aside in 2022 to focus on her Vietnam Foundation (an Australian non-profit charity) commitments, and her role with the committee of management of The Asian Arts Society of Australia.

Note:

“Mai Nguyen-Long” previously / also known as: Mai Long / Long Mei / Mai Nguyen Long / Mai JMNXL / JMNXL / Justine Long / maixx; 2009: changed artist name from Mai Long to Mai Nguyen-Long as a statement of reclaiming her Vietnamese heritage following Pho Dog Blackout.

2014 Mai’s 2 month self-conducted residency in Hanoi

Copyright All material on this site is copyright of Mai Nguyen-Long unless otherwise stated.  All other images/photographs are the property of their respective author/s and may not be used without permission.