Chinoiseries is a collection of small hybrid objects, situated between painting and sculpture, that depict imagery tied to the lives of the Vietnamese diaspora. Each piece is inserted into a floral frame reminiscent of decorative lacquer and mother-of-pearl ornamentation. Exhibited at SLQS Gallery, these works revisit and distort stereotypical and fetishised portrayals of Asian women.

This series comprises five small wall-based works between painting and sculpture. They depict Vietnamese female figures, framed within floral compositions that imitate the aesthetics of mother-of-pearl and lacquer. These images draw inspiration from languid poses rooted in Western iconography. By reappropriating these visual codes, the series challenges and subverts stereotypical and fetishised representations of Asian female bodies.

The term chinoiserie here can be understood as the aestheticisation of a mistranslation or a cultural misunderstanding. The confrontation with one’s own representation is often experienced as a form of violence producing confusion, disorientation, and emotional dissonance. These works play ironically with orientalist stereotypes and borrow visual references from Western art history (such as the harem motif or Millais’s Ophelia). Through these appropriations, the depicted figure seems to willingly adopt a form of travesty, assuming the codes of a foreign iconography. The goal is not to present an unfiltered reality, but rather a reconstructed image, filtered through recycled and often unconscious cultural references. Creating this series allowed the Artist to revisit the imagery of her childhood and merge it with more recent experiences, including research on the Vietnamese nail salon community shaped by women's labor, beauty and toxicity. The lack of transmitted history from migrant parents, and the uncertainty around one’s origins, often leads descendants to engage in a kind of intense imaginative activity to find meaning. The Artist lets herself be carried by storytelling, tracing back to simulated origins without fear of using clichés in order to better understand and confront them.

Hoa Dung Clerget (b. France) lives and works in the UK. Her sculptural and installation-based practice explores the labour, aesthetics and social realities of immigrant women, often through the lens of nail art subculture. Drawing from Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘liminal’, Clerget investigates how diasporic identities are shaped in spaces of cultural negotiation and reinvention. Using everyday materials such as gel nail polish, she creates tactile works that blur the boundaries between art, beauty and subculture.

Clerget holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art and a BA Hons in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins.

Recent exhibitions include: solo show Durian Revolution (Studio Chapple, 2023) and group exhibitions Porous Abstraction (Alma Pearl, 2025), tươi sống (Harlesden High Street, 2024), Beauty Tech Art Spa (Cornershop, 2023) and Paradise (Harlesden High Street, Lecce, 2022).