Luxury Birdbath
Michelle Nguyen on Luxury Birdbath: "In all honesty, I was watching a lot of that Netflix show “Is It Cake?” at the time I started painting this like the dumb absorbent sponge I am. This particular painting speaks to the growing class gap and the wasteful excess of extravagant living. That being said, there is also a thread of humour here. I wanted the birdbath to be outrageous, like something you can get in a SkyMall catalogue.
I am also interested in the processes of our food systems. At what point does an animal become food and how we create dissonance between these two ideas in order to consume their flesh.
The figure on the bottom wears a shroud that is similar to the Vietnamese Buddhist deity Quan Am, the goddess of mercy, who is very similar to the Virgin Mary in her characterization and history. I had my mother retell her story from what she personally knows, and in a nutshell, it just seems as if all of her stories revolve around people using her as a scapegoat. Even when she is not to be blamed, she just bows her head and takes it. This is suppose to be evidence of her compassion, but for me, I just see a failure of the Bechdel test. On altars, she is usually depicted atop of whatever display she is apart of surrounded by fruit. This painting does the opposite. She sits on the very bottom in-between carcasses of meat. Her physical form is non-existent, just like the depiction of my grandmother in Cockfight Melee. The painting is meant to address how traditional modalities of mortality are invalid in our modern world."
Nguyen's illustrative paintings employ a variety of techniques using oil paint and pastel on a canvas surface. Rife with narrative symbols, her dramatic tableaus sing with chaotic tension and humorous undertones. Painted in jewel tones and highlighted by soft-hued pastels, starkly contrasted by bold gestural markings, Nguyen's works are ready to hang framed or unframed.
