Minor Attractions 2026: The Newman Hotel, London

For Minor Attractions 2026, ai. is pleased to present a single artwork Planche CLXXXIV (2026) by Phuong Nguyen (b. 1992, Tkaronto; living in Toronto) is a visual artist working in representational oil painting and experimental weaving. Nguyen uses these mediums to explore themes of Ornamentalism and the relationship between exoticism and violence by referencing the aesthetics and the history of Chinoiserie and South East Asian/Vietnamese femininity. 

Planche is an ongoing series of works by Phuong Nguyen engaging directly with theorist Anne Anlin Cheng's critique of the Asian female body as a synthetic, decorative object. In Ornamentalism, these objects themselves become peri-human, existing in the liminal zone between personhood and object. By extension and playing with the idea of “living yet dead”, the artist gravitates towards imagery that is domestically familiar and ritualistic, such as incense sticks and smoke - a tool that is used to communicate with the ancestors who have passed. Commonly found in Vietnamese ancestral altars among offerings of fruit are mangosteens, which have a reputation for being the Queen of Fruits due to their small window of ripeness and their sweet taste; it was considered so exotic that it was out of reach for even European royalty before modern refrigeration.  A disembodied hand appears in a way that it seemingly belongs to ghostly bodies. Referencing the 1919 French colonial publication L’Art à Hué, each of the works is titled Planche [plate] alongside a Roman numeral of the publication’s matching illustration. Nguyen further reinvents the colonial source’s illustrations in three-dimensional forms by pulling from its corresponding imagery to construct the frames.

The ornamentation is deliberate, serving as conflicting signifiers of danger, movement, healing, and hope for Vietnamese refugees during and after the Vietnam War. Through the making process, these materials acquire a sacred quality for the artist, transforming the piece into something akin to a traditional Vietnamese family altar—a highly revered and decorated space central to ancestral worship. The wooden structure is, in turn, suspended by woven viscose twine. This twine (commonly used to fasten banana leaves in cultural cooking, gardening, and general binding) acts as both a physical medium and a visual signifier of repair, re-assemblage, and migration. It not only binds the various elements of the artwork together but is also woven to provide foundational structural support. Furthermore, the twine weaving references Western understandings of "craft" while highlighting the historically undervalued labour of women from the global majority.