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MAYA NGUYEN


Based in Chicago, b. 1996, VN/RUS, Interdisciplinary Performer. Nguyen incorporates disparate (and often clashing) material sources into forms that remain conceptually indeterminate, such as performance lectures, sound improvisation, and participatory sculptural interventions. Her favored materials include: speech fragments, mistranslations, painful sounds, urban recordings, sounds imitating nature sounds, breast pump parts, internet debris, and videos of daily life.
︎MORE WORK
︎︎︎SOUND ESSAY: A DIASPORIC MAKING
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video

MAYA NGUYENS


Video Installation
5 Screens, 5 Headphones
16 Interviews (10-15min each)
Folder with 16 Participant Contract Forms

Lateral Entrant
Goethe-Institut
Chicago, US, April - July 2026


A collaborative project consisting of 16 conversations with people who share the name Maya/Maia/Maja/Mya/Mia/Mai/Mayah/Maiah/Maika Nguyen. The project explores diasporic identity, migration, language, and family history by documenting the global trajectories of this name. 

As a child, my Vietnamese first name “Mai” became “Maya,” a common name in Eastern Europe (among other places), while “Nguyen” (shared by roughly 30% of Vietnamese people) resisted translation. My premise is that other people who share this name migrated at some point in their family history from Vietnam to another country, and that the name holds this particular history.

Using online platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Youtube, and Bluesky), I approached over fifty people to participate in recorded interviews. This project builds an intimate portrait of Vietnamese diasporic life through 16 conversations with Maya Nguyens from Canada, Denmark, Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, and Germany.