She is an Object of Beauty, a solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Toronto-based artist Phuong Nguyen, is on view now at Johnson Lowe Gallery. In her work, Nguyen explores the feminine body and how it is “aestheticized, archived and abstracted.”
Nguyen flips the script on the fetishization of Asian culture with works that are both beautiful and brutalized. As both a show title and a theme, She is an Object of Beauty confronts the way women are often seen as merely beautiful objects.
In the exhibit, delicate oil paintings are suspended inside of beautiful hand-carved wood frames and bound by plastic twine, grommets, jump rings, glass beads and wire. Through figural oil painting and experimental weaving, Nguyen explores themes of Orientalism, ornamentalism and the intersection of exoticism and violence. Her work references Chinoiserie through the symbolism of fine silks, lotus candles, dragon fruit and fine porcelain.
Ceramic pieces are displayed broken and pieced back together, tightly bound with twine and ribbon. These fragments explore the ways that beauty and violence can co-exist within the same form; the tension of their assembly and the tight weave of the plastic twine — a ubiquitous material in Vietnamese households — is both beautiful and ominous.
Planche CXXI (2025) features a brown hand-carved wood frame wrapped with red twine. In the painting, a dark background is juxtaposed against a hot pink fabric in the foreground. The effect is reminiscent of the baroque era’s use of the chiaroscuro technique — an Italian word that translates to “light-dark.” The effect places greater attention and detail on the ceramics and other little trinkets, such as a fish and a turtle, that are front and center in the piece.
Nguyen’s deconstructed ceramics are ornamented with tassels and tightly tied twine, such as Nocturne Gourd (Planche CXCII) (2024). In contrast with the tightly wound ribbons and twine in her ceramic works, Nguyen’s paintings depict vessels that are broken and loosely held together again with delicate, draping ribbons.
Turtle Shell (2021) is a ceramic piece composed of a broken bowl, plastic twine and resin bound together by red twine in the shape of a turtle’s shell. Though visibly cracked, the piece retains a striking elegance.
The imperfections visible in Turtle Shell invite reflection: What might this once-whole bowl have endured to be reduced to fragments? Nguyen re-assembles the shards into a new form, an act that speaks to healing, resourcefulness and the aesthetics of repair. In this way, Turtle Shell is a celebration of resilience.
In Taxonomy of a Living Thing (2024), a fairly simple frame complements an ornate painting. Depicting a ceramic work that is broken into four parts and suspended by twine and ribbon, the piece suggests that even when destroyed, disconnected and disassembled, one can find beauty in brokenness.
She is an Object of Beauty pushes against diminishing notions of Asian femininity and a long history of objectification. Nguyen does so by reclaiming certain materials, ornamentation and what they symbolize. She uses tools of aesthetics, such as opulent frames and sensual forms, as commentary to transform passive objects into layered narratives. She is an Object of Beauty is on view at Johnson Lowe Fine Art through June 28.
