A digital archive of Asian/Asian American contemporary art history

Pham, Nathalie

Other Names: Thúy-Auh; T. A.

Artist Website

"Using the techniques of crafts and sculpture, I integrate cast body parts with sensual fabrics to create sculptural life forms. These are my vision of a world where people are transcending contemporary cultures and are no longer prisoners of their own histories and traditions. To create my cross-cultural life-forms, I pick fabrics that are used in various rituals and traditions in Asia and in the West and have reference to their daily wear and usage. Selected fabrics and materials are very soft to our touch and evoke the notion of caressing the skin of another life. I combine them into harmonious fabric bodies that cradle their body part. Yet, the bodies are still fragile and depend on life support such as feeding tubes, arteries and tentacles to survive in this brave new world where they have escaped our current obsession with our own cultures. They yearn to reach us and to be understood in this world where we all are struggling to define our own cultural identity: which is a particularly difficult task when the distances between global cultures (heritage, history and tradition) are shrinking. My work speaks of learning from others and unification then of separation, isolation and the specialization of our spheres."

Nathalie T.A. Pham, Artist Statement, [2007]

Gallery of Selected Works