If They Survive, They are Refugees, Duong Thuy Nguyen (2024) (EMPIRE LINES Live at SLQS Gallery)

In this special episode, contemporary artists Hoa Dung Clerget and Duong Thuy Nguyen, and gallerist Sarah Le Quang Sang, join EMPIRE LINES live, exploring the legacies of French and British colonialism in East Asia, fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War, through the series, If They Survive, They are Refugees (2024).

Marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, Only Your Name (2025) is a group exhibition featuring works by artists of Vietnamese descent: Hoa Dung Clerget, Vicky Đỗ, and Duong Thuy Nguyen. The exhibition follows the journey of Vietnamese people migrating to the UK from 1975 onwards, preserving history through a Vietnamese lens and reflecting on the contemporary diaspora.

In this special episode, recorded live at SLQS Gallery in London, gallerist Sarah Le Quang Song discusses the particular location of the exhibition, close to Hackney’s Kingsland Road, also known as the ‘Pho Mile’, where many Vietnamese families settled from the late 1970s. We discuss the title, which draws from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), a novel by Ocean Vuong, and the work of thinkers like Homi Bhabha and Saidiya Hartman.

Duong Thuy Nguyen describes the process of making their embossed aluminium and wax sculptures, which reinterpret Joan Wakelin’s photographs of Vietnamese refugees held in Hong Kong detention centres and refugee camps, now held in the collections of the V&A in London. Hoa Dung Clerget presents installations and sculptural works that consider the labour and lives of immigrant women through Nail Art subculture, distorting stereotypical and fetishised portrayals of Asian women. Drawing on their work, Chinoiserie (2025), Hoa shares examples of orientalism in East Asian art and education systems. We explore both artists’ work with the Museum of the Home in East London, plus Vicky Đỗ’s documentary films, revisiting the history of Vietnamese refugees arriving in Hong Kong.

This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Only Your Name, an exhibition at SLQS Gallery in London, in July 2025.

For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DLhGFqCIhNA/

Womb of Fire 2025, curated by Tuong Linh, opens in Hanoi in October 2025, and tours to Ho Chi Minh City until January 2026.

Interspecies Entanglements, curated by Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp, is at the SLQS Screening Room online until February 2026. Damaris Athene is at SLQS Gallery in London from 10 October 2025.

For more contemporary artists working from diasporas, find out more about SEEDLINGS: Diasporic Imaginaries (2025)⁠⁠, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic with Travelling Gallery in Scotland: linktr.ee/seedlingstg2025

Hear Iman Datoo and Jessica J. Lee on Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging (2024), recorded live as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn: pod.link/1533637675/episode/b457bcd064badcdc4dc2a2a8fde86768⁠

For more about orientalism and French colonialism in North Africa, listen to contemporary artist ⁠Zineb Sedira⁠ on Dreams Have No Titles (2022-Now), recorded with Whitechapel Gallery and Goodman Gallery in London, as part of EMPIRE LINES at Venice: ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/N2NjZjUzYTctY2JlMS00N2JhLThjNTAtNGE3YWUwMjEwYzNl

For more about mother of pearl paintings, hear Sonia Ocaña Ruiz’s EMPIRE LINES episode about a ⁠Mexican Enconchado of the Virgin of Guadalupe (c. 1700s)⁠: ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/NGEyNWUwOTItNTMzOC00NDgyLWJiZjAtZmFjOWFjNTkzYmQ0

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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