Yeo Workshop

Chinoiserie (Fairy Land)

Artist Profile

HOA DUNG CLERGET (b. 1985, France), creates films, installations, and painted objects that explore the labour and lives of immigrant women and the Nail Art subculture. Her Vietnamese heritage and education in France have shaped her research into how immigrant women construct their identities and find their place in society, especially through their work. Her practice reflects her own diasporic experience. At the heart of her work is the ongoing process of identity reconstruction. Clerget draws on Homi Bhabha's concept of the liminal space, an in-between where diasporic identity is constructed through hybridisation, through the refusal of fixed categories, and through the subversion of imposed norms. The artist sees this constant negotiation in the lives of immigrant women, whether in domestic or professional spaces. The materials and objects Clerget integrates into her work come directly from the everyday lives of Vietnamese families: brooms, plastic stools, durian, folk songs, seemingly mundane elements that carry deep cultural significance, passed down through generations. By repurposing these objects, she challenges their meaning and status, using art as a tool to reverse situations.