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.

sound

WELL-OILED MACHINE

Sound Performance, 25 min

First Presbytarian Church
Chicago, US 2026

Yes Projects
Chicago, US 2026

Tossarrose Collective
Chicago, US 2025

︎︎︎https://youtu.be/tUw-i1QoyFI

A performance using sound recordings of the artist giving birth in hospital, including her voice, her birthing team, and hospital machines.

What happens when a body is taken for a well-oiled machine and a train is taken for a living being? Between a human voice imitating a train and hospital recordings creating a rhythmic track, "Well-Oiled Machine" plays on rigidity, rhythm, mechanisms, and animism.