Diane Severin Nguyen’s images reveal intimate views of unfamiliar, alienated materials, doused in sensuous light and vivid color. Her complex imagery is achieved by staging materials in her studio, focusing on matter in states of transformation. She speaks of the ‘wounds’ and ‘ruptures’ she creates for the camera. Flesh-like objects are cut, pierced and burned, often using the sticky and slow burning fire from napalm. Nguyen writes, “most of my constructions are incredibly delicate or tenuous, and the camera intervenes moments before their collapse.” The amorphous subject is captured decisively by her camera, and in that instantaneous action of seizure, her work also acknowledges photography’s partnership with violence, inherent in the medium.

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“I think I’m actually dismissing legibility so that I can access a new kind of clarity, one that is immanent to the image, a lucidity that cannot be usurped by someone’s ‘knowledge’ of the thing being photographed.” – Nguyen interviewed by Alec Recinos for BOMB, 2021

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“Contingency might be a word for it, as [Nguyen’s] visual alchemy departs from the stuff that surrounds us: anything and everything that we touch and handle, from the things we ingest to the currencies we circulate to the devices that mediate our unbounded global views.” – Franklin Melendez in Kaleidoscope, 2020

Diane Severin Nguyen (b. 1990; lives and works between LA and NY) received her BA from Virginia Commonwealth University and MFA from Bard College. Her work is currently on view in Made in L.A. 2020 at the Hammer & Huntington Museums in LA and the 13th Shanghai Biennale at Sun Ke Villa, Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include Reoccurring Afterlife, Empty Gallery, HK and Minor twin worlds, Bureau, NY (2019). Nguyen’s film, Tyrant Star (2019) was screened at the 57th NY Film Festival; the Yebisu Festival, Tokyo; IFFR, Rotterdam; and Carnegie Museum.