My manager will continue to update after his floating
Dimensions variable
Customized nail set (acrylic, lacquer, fish scale, betel nut), sticker set, photography
with production support from OCAC (TW) and Rimbun Dahan residency (MY)
in Winding Collection: Things Picked Up in Continuous Whispers exhibition, OCAC, TW
“Personality is a nail” is a pop-up showcase from the ongoing series “one Eternailty later”, where Kieu-Anh revisits notions of women care work and beauty standards in participatory conceptual nail salons motif, drawing comparison between the performance of beauty care, the aestheticization of the human body and art making.
Based on a tabloid column using the shapes of nails as personality prediction in Saigon newspaper, 1936, as quoted and translated from Paris-soir, she gathered selected nail motifs from Vietnam, Germany, Malaysia and Taiwan to illustrate the editorial. The nails are the result of experimenting with hybrid material, namely fish scales from Rimbun Dahan and betel-juice dyed acrylic form of Taiwanese participants, while some are done similarly to Vietnamese lacquer painting technique, reminiscing the act of painting and undoing nail art for eternal care from Vietnamese immigrant nail industry.
One way of reading the French-origin nail prediction text for Kieu-Anh is to revise colonial and social hierarchy through beauty standards across generations, from long, untrimmed nails for the bourgeoisie, to farmer’s working nail and the fading tradition of betel-dying (teeth) with contemporary nail samples collected in 2024 - with her grandmother’s hands as the canvas