Mai Nguyễn-Long, The Vomit Girl Project (installation detail) 2024, glazed and unglazed clay, dimensions variable, commissioned for APT11, with selected loans, © Mai Nguyễn-Long, Photo: Chloë Callistemon, QAGOMA.
Mai Nguyễn-Long takes on her journey to discover her lost connection to Vietnamese folk culture.
(A message to the reader.)
Attempting to speak her mother tongue, Vomit Girl invokes armies of spirits to demystify her guttural utterances. The Vomit Girl Project 2024, an installation of over 220 clay sculptures, is on display at GOMA until 13 July 2025, a recent feature of The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA. Formally commencing in 2017, this ongoing project pays homage to my 1994 encounter with đình woodcarvings in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam—an experience that introduced me to the concept of mộc mạc. That year, excursions across more than thirteen different đình revealed woodcarvings so enchanting that they temporarily dislodged the war images and motifs of exclusionary diasporic politics that had come to shape my identity.
Twenty years later, Vomit Girl’s appearance in my visual diary signalled a spiritual illness, which I deduced could only be addressed by reconnecting with Vietnam. My resolve developed into an urgent desire to learn from my father’s photo archive and my mother’s extensive research. As my Vietnamese language had weakened, these materials provided crucial guidance for reclaiming and rebuilding parts of my identity I had earnestly erased. Over a five-year period, I read and reread a deceptively simple article by my mum, Kerry Nguyễn-Long, on đình woodcarving, published in Arts of Asia (2015). This helped me come to terms with the magnitude of my perceived loss. At this point, more than two decades after my first visit, đình were less accessible. While the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum holds an invaluable permanent display of replica woodcarvings, these do not replace the mysticism of an on-site experience.
The earliest surviving đình dates back to 1576. A place to worship village guardians, the đình was centrally located to serve administrative, cultural and religious functions for an entire village. They also functioned as an emotional centre, honouring the idea that spirit, feeling and continuity are a holistic part of humanity where arts practices are not isolated arenas of research. Rich in folklore, dình woodcarvings provide insight into village arts, many of which are ephemeral. In 1904, the French colonial government fractured the spiritual administrative structure of đình by instating secular governance structures, dismantling social cohesion and order. Many đình were destroyed as a result of this.
Above: Đình Hưng Lộc 17th century woodcarving. Left: boys and girls teasing each other. Right: woman dancing. These images are from the black and white book where I came across the term mộc mạc for the first time. The 1975 publication accompanied an exhibition organised by Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum Director Nguyễn Đỗ Cung. Below: Đình Tây Đằng 16th century. I took this photo of fairies riding dragons in 1994. The image is indicative of the general location of woodcarvings, being high up within a đình’s architectural structure and their state of wear at the time.
My drive to understand the essence of my đình encounters occurred alongside a serendipitous residency in the historic ceramic village of Bát Tràng in 2015. After my third year working with clay, as well as further research trips and reading, I began to dream and think in the medium itself. Around this time, Haunted Fairy, one of my numerous iterations of Vomit Girl, emerged through the clay – a living substance now sharing stories of its own. It became a conduit for my buried đình encounters. Like the faded faces of đình fairies, of apsara lineage, her eyes were absent, a detail I identified with inner clarity.
I was now confident that clay could provide me with a much-needed anchor. My clay sculptures took on a life beyond their cultural origin, evoking a wide range of mythologies about our connection to the earth. The making itself, particularly wedging and coiling, connected me with Mother Goddess (Đạo Mẫu) processes of engaging with and reimagining stories through dance. Clay was guiding me towards discovering hidden stories. Instead of representing preconceived ideas, it exposed me to expansive realms where humans are not at the centre.
In my early attempts at reading Vietnamese books about the đình, I came across the term mộc mạc. My Vietnamese-English dictionary informed me it meant rustic, simple or even uncouth. However, I felt mộc mạc held clues to so much more. I no longer wish to translate it. It is linked to the sensibilities of a yin-leaning yin yang wet rice agricultural society. Mộc mạc is a framework associated with the early nature goddesses of Vietnam who still inform the basis of contemporary folklore practices, yet often severed from modern art critique.
Following the more restrictive Neo-Confucian Lê Sơ dynasty (1428-1527), the Mạc dynasty (1527-1592) created circumstances where popular religion and associated spiritual activities of the đình could flourish. The woodcarvings that intrigue me most date between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. They convey a creative immediacy, pragmatic realism, communal spirit and strong sense of humour. Through these carved vignettes, villages tell their own stories outside of religious or imperial orthodoxies and Confucian propriety.
By the nineteenth century, scenes of village life all but disappeared as the vignettes became more disciplined and formulaic in response to the changing political circumstances of Confucian-oriented dynastic rule and French colonisation. In contrast, under the Mạc, many new đình were built or renovated. Notably, Liễu Hạnh, one of Vietnam’s most powerful and enduring multifunctional goddesses, was born during this period in 1557. Today she continues to hold an unrivalled position at the top of the contemporary Mother Goddess pantheon in northern Vietnam.
Left: Vigit Hand Eye, both hands over eyes. Right: Vigit Hefeco (aka Vomit Girl as Heroic Faeces Collector), pearl. Works from Mai Nguyễn-Long, The Vomit Girl Project 2024, glazed and unglazed clay, dimensions variable, commissioned for APT11, with selected loans, © Mai Nguyễn-Long, Photo: Bernie Fischer.
Although I had already unknowingly witnessed a Mother Goddess ritual, it was in 1996 that artist Đặng Thị Khuê enthusiastically invited me to participate in one, and Khuê, who spoke so passionately to me about mộc mạc. While Khuê sees mộc mạc as a humane aesthetic, connecting humans with nature and the Vietnamese soul, the dispassionate contemporary art historian Phạm Trung describes mộc mạc as mere pragmatism in response to the harsh climate, war and poor economy in northern Vietnam.
These primordial and practical insights, grounded in clay, helped shape my response to seeing the bombshell repurposed as a bell outside a village đình. In tandem with my expanding conceptualisation of mộc mạc, the bomb casing cum bell located in a đình courtyard became a pivot to unlock the genesis of my 1996 disconnection with from the đình. Using the protective symbology of my Worana coil building concept, I challenged the horror of the bomb casing. And now, translated into a non-metal clay form, my Doba defy victimhood. Out of these building blocks emerged The Vomit Girl Project and all my Vomit Girl iterations in clay.
Vomit Girl iterations from The Vomit Girl Project 2024, left to right: Tongue Shrub; Vomit Girl Classic, dome spire; Elevated Poo Ball; Vigit Hefeco, grenade hat muddle; Doba Brushwork, multi–arm halo; Vomit Girl Classic, fetal warp.
In the 1930s, when anti-colonial sentiments were on the rise, the brown, earthy palette, which I now think of as mộc mạc, of silk painter Nguyễn Phan Chánh entered the debate about what aesthetic characteristics asserted Vietnameseness. Struggles for independence from France gave rise to an effervescence in popular religion, particularly Mother Goddess worship, throughout the country. Fast-forward to the height of communist policies, ritual practices such as Mother Goddess worship were thought of as depraved superstition, taking advantage of the vulnerable. Đình were used as a grain storage. Vomit Girl’s interconnected but compulsively evolving forms have been inspired by how folkloric practices have persisted through different forms of suppression, morphed, grafted, continued in secret, and adapted. Likewise, Vomit Girl adapts to different physical spaces, timeframes and circumstances, rising to the challenge of creative and collaborative resolutions.
Mai Nguyễn-Long Doba Nation (installation detail) 2025, glazed and unglazed clay, installed dimensions variable, © Mai Nguyễn-Long, Photo: John Curtin Gallery courtesy Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin.
Hence, mộc mạc is perhaps most superficially conveyed through my unglazed clays and earthenware feel, but more deeply through Vomit Girl’s very presence, her replicating and playful persistence. These traits and her alter-moniker as Vigit, Goddess of Infected Tongues for all Those Who Have Lost Their Mother Tongue, have become my gesture to privilege spiritual functionality over theorisations of ‘beauty’ from a European art historical perspective, inseparable from the colonial matrix of power. Through this journeying I have come to link mộc mạc with the history of resistance in Vietnam and thereby build my own personalised form of creative resilience.
Hence, when Vomit Girl initially came to me in a drawing and by the time I knew she was not going away, I accepted her as a sign to go with her to Vietnam. This has become a journey of endless questioning, language barriers, and snippets of discovery I try to piece together to find meaning in a ‘broken’ world. In this way, The Vomit Girl Project has been a journey towards unravelling the mystery of mộc mạc. Contradictorily, being grounded in continuous fluidity is the place between non-static boundaries where Vomit Girl and her expanding entourage reside, continuously evolving to evade domination – a belonging defined by transformations.
About Mai Nguyễn-Long
Mai Nguyễn-Long is a visual artist based in Dharawal Country, Bulli. Tasmanian-born to a Vietnamese father and a fourth-generation Mother of Irish and Samoan descent, her formative years were spent in Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. In 2023, she was awarded a practice-based PhD for her thesis exploring the interconnection between contemporary art and folkloric practices in Vietnam. Represented by Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin, Mai works on projects in Scotland and Vietnam.
Sources
Nguyễn, Đỗ Cung. Việt Nam: Điêu khắc dân gian thế kỷ XVI – XVII – XVIII [Vietnam: Popular Sculpture 16th – 17th – 18th Centuries]. Hà Nội: Nhà Xuất Bản Ngoại Văn [Foreign Languages Publishing House], 1975.
Nguyễn-Long, Mai (2023). Vomit Girl Beyond Diasporic Trauma: Interconnecting Contemporary Art and Folkloric Practices in Vietnam. University of Wollongong. Thesis. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uow.27666564.v1
Nguyễn-Long, Kerry. “Woodcarvings in Communal Halls (Dinh) in northern Vietnam: Themes, Influences, Continuity, Change.” Arts of Asia 45, no. 4 (July–August 2015): 129–143.
