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MAYA NGUYEN


MN is a Vietnamese-Russian interdisciplinary artist with a focus on sound performance and diasporic making. She gathers speech fragments, urban recordings, body movements, migratory routes, sounds imitating nature sounds, and videos of daily life into open-ended works. These often take the shape of performance lecture, sound installation, movement, and video.

But no single material choice defines her practice. Instead, she works through ambiguity and interaction across borders: making a commitment of not committing to just one side, but to a multiplicity of sides; to the mix of different sound channels; to the touch of different bodies. Through these material interactions, she puts power relations in action, focusing on the domestic sphere, colonial histories, movement geographies, and the relating between human and natural worlds.



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︎︎︎SOUND ESSAY: A DIASPORIC MAKING
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sound

CAGE WITH THE SOUND OF ITS OWN MAKING


Steel Fence Posts, Human Bodies,  Fabrication Tools

︎︎︎https://youtu.be/PUjzXlxCyB4



A crew of metal workers gathers for one night to live fabricate a large-scale steel structure that is at the same time a sonic instrument. Harsh grinding sounds of steel fence pipes being sawed are followed by resonant bell-like sounds of the same steel pipes played with hammers.

In reference to Robert Morris’ “Box with the Sound of Its Own Making.” As the story goes, John Cage came to see the box that contained a sound recording documenting its construction from start to finish, and insisted on sitting through the whole 3hr-long recording, to the surprise of Morris. 

Participants: Martina Freile (Lead Fabricator); Graciela Gonzalez (Drilling Lead); Evan Geczy (Sanding Lead); Maya Nguyen (Audio Technician); Bambi Kunst (Rigger); Sayeda Misa (Off-site Fabricator); Erik Peterson (Facilitator); Jenna Lyle (Supervisor); Ruby Que (Videographer); Eric Strom (Photographer)

Realized as part of The Arts Club of Chicago Fellowship 2025-26. The structure remained on-site as a temporary outdoor sculpture throughout August 2025.