MAIN GALLERY School of Art & Design Gallery
Australian National University
105 Childers Street Acton ACT 2601

Higher Degree Research
Season One | Exhibition One
1 April – 14 April 2022

Objects In-between: Designing a Visual Language for Traversing Personal Identity, Migration and Intercultural Spaces.

My PhD project draws on the material culture around contemporary design and craft traditions to articulate identity from an intercultural context. These ideas are framed within the intercultural context of place, home and object. Personal collections of objects are analysed through taxonomy to synthesise interdisciplinary studio investigations combining graphic animations with contemporary jewellery and object processes to develop a visual system that examines cross-cultural translations.

Central to the research is the notion of hybridity as a ‘third space’ informed by my personal narratives and identity as a migrant living in Sydney, Australia. I connect the research to broader theory of third space identity by writings of diaspora intellectuals: Ien Ang, Homi Bhabha, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Nikos Papastergiadis. In addition to this I also connect with object theory to argue how objects can shape and reflect identity. Framed by these theoretical contexts I explore concepts of movement, migration and identity from multiple cultural perspectives of Australian, Chinese and Vietnamese heritage. Through deconstructing these ideas, I define my sense of intercultural hybridity in order to extend common and relatable strategies for designing a visual language that articulates my third space identity.

My final series of metal object-based works are tangible evocations of liminality as manifestations of my experience as a Southeast Asian-Australian woman and further represent a perspective of Australia’s unique complex cultural realities.

PhD Candidate at the Australian National University 2017 - 2022.
This research was also supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Thesis Cover Design: Huy Nguyen
Exhibition Installation: Gavino Pilli