No Mud, No Lotus | Sarah Nguyen

Breathe

Home is in you.

           I have arrived.

                      I am home in the here and the now

With every step around and through this exhibition, we are
connected to themes of loss, struggle, grief in multiple transactions of beauty, while facing concepts of the human condition and the brevity of existence, demonstrated through the language of nature.

Bio:
Sarah Nguyen is a mixed media artist, working primarily with paper. Storytelling is central to her hand cut-fiber panels and paintings. Her work has appeared in numerous national and international solo and group exhibitions and publications. Her work has been part of exhibitions in museums and festivals including (but not limited to) Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum of Asian Pacific Experience, the Daum Museum, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Grounds and Museum, the Truman Museum, Cheekwood Estates & Gardens, and Kansas City’s 2018 Open Spaces. She has taken part in a number of artist residencies from around the world as a visiting artist and teacher including Serbia, Bulgaria, Japan, and France, as well as the United States. Sarah is currently the Art Installations Curator for the True/False Film Fest. Sarah received her BFA in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia

Artist Statement:
My work evokes memory, play, ritual, the dissolving boundaries of waking life and dreams. I use a balance of abstract and representational forms in order to sever the connection between shape and meaning, connecting the viewer instead to the gesture of the knife, so that s/he becomes complicit in the art. Folklore, reverence and refinement of nature, and observance of daily life, are the concepts behind my work. Each scroll is hand cut Tyvek. The work is suspended from the ceiling, away from the wall using fishing wire. I draw inspiration from my heritage of traditional Jewish paper cuts. Jewish art reveals universal elements in its visual representation of plants and animals.

Nature is a universal language, one that all cultures understand, in that way its symbols can be used to bring you to a common ground. The language of nature is a shared language and allows the viewer to go beyond their own personal experience and into the experience of the collective. Transcending the concepts of beauty and enveloping the viewer in a space of color and texture; I hope to connect the viewer with these current themes of loss, struggle, grief in multiple transactions of beauty, while facing concepts of the human condition and the brevity of existence. This series is part of my work which addresses political and cultural happenings in the United States of America. The stories and myths of a culture convey a sense of place and a sense of the people who inhabit that place. In this way, visual art that interacts with a story enters a narrative sphere where it must encounter the local.

Image: No Mud, No Lotus (detail), hand-cut Tyvek, plastic rod, spray paint, variable dimensions, 2025