Mai Nguyễn-Long – Vomit Girl: Shifting, 2025-2026

Vomit Girl (« La Fille qui vomit ») is an ever-evolving mythical figure. First emerging from the artist’s experience of social exclusion and the feeling of having “no identity, language, or voice to speak with”, Vomit Girl has since become what the artist describes as a “contemporary folkloric form”. Vietnamese village carving, folk traditions and spirit beliefs provide the foundations for NguyênLong’s mythology. Within it, diasporic trauma, inherited histories and the enduring effects of Agent Orange, the defoliant used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971 converge. Created during a residency at Moly-Sabata, one of France’s oldest artists’ residencies, the ceramic sculptures presented here add new figures to that universe. Their bodies are modelled, carved and glazed from recurring motifs that migrate from one sculpture to the next.

Shaped through processes of fragmentation and reassembly, Mai Nguyên-Long’s works draw on hybrid cultural references, moving between humour and unease, to explore experiences of silencing and re-emergence. They give voice and form to histories obscured by diasporic trauma, while opening onto alternative modes of memory and transmission.