Gypsum, Gold Leaf, Lacquer, and Rice Bag Imprint
A floor sculpture of rice bags made out of gypsum with gold leaf lettering. Inspired by the ubiquitous food that accompanies family dinners, Bag integrates Laotian and Thai currency motifs to reflect her sibling relationships as well as symbolize commodity exchange between the two countries. Bag challenges expectations by presenting a sculpture that appears soft, plump and pliable, but is actually durable and fixed. These dualities converge in the sense that the personal is also socioeconomic and that the familial is global.
Bags (2022)
Gypsum, Gold Leaf, Lacquer, and Rice Bag Imprint
Dimensions Variable
Nancy Sayavong’s sculptures excavate the social and historical meanings of private and public spaces that are made invisible. In particular, the artist pulls apart sites of home renovation and urban renewal, their vocabulary of taste and socioeconomic desire, and how they reveal our compulsive social need to maintain certain appearances of our spaces.
Sayavong’s work mimics familiar constructions that form the foundations of urban and domestic sites, such as flooring, walls, and frames. Though precisely modeled on utilitarian structures in both scale and construction, the sculptures are instilled with elements of structural and material contradictions that render them unfunctional. By displaying the hollowed out interior of a column, for example, Sayavong creates tension between pragmatic and decorative function. The artist’s use of slightly off kilter constructions and uncommon materials for basic structures, and the resulting unease this provokes in the viewer, become the starting point for peeling back archetypes of architecture, exposing their social value. Sayavong evokes the visual and material syntax and historical genealogy of class by referencing classic columns, Persian rugs, framed artwork, and other signifiers of affluence.
Foreclosures, demolitions, and renovations, whether of homes or of public institutions, have long been symptoms of latent disappearing act of urban renewal campaigns. Erasure and rapid gentrification is particularly pronounced in San Francisco, where Sayavong moved a few years ago and currently lives. Much in the way that geological narratives can be taken from cross sections of trees and beds of sedimentary rock, Sayavong pinpoints layered indications of cultural capital and class distinction in American urban and domestic environments.
-Val Moon, Curatorial Assistant, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
39”x 90”x 17”in. Poplar, douglas, paint, 2019. Installed in Rong at Flowers (alternative space with multi doorways)
(drywall, oscillating multi-tool, artist. 2020.)
This is a documentation of an installation where I ripped apart portions of an existing room to find something from behind the partition. This was an act of ripping away the layered skin in search for emotional remnants archived and hidden inside. Romantically, was I trying to find the daily newspaper construction workers usually throw in before they seal up the last wall at a site project?
This particular residential building was erected almost 100 years ago on top of (land)fill by the pier in San Francisco. In time, the building will sink with its historicity.
Glass, pine moulding, maple, birch plywood, and c-print.
MDF with white oak veneer, hand milled ash hardwood with burned etching of Persian rug.
size comparison.
Plywood, layers of paint, and piece of San Francisco sidewalk.
(backview)
We often, or usually have family photo albums to capture memories and events in our lives. Slightly joyous and at times harmlessly embarrassing. Often parents, guardians and lovers are behind the camera.
Making It Work: An Album is a series of photographs that capture post-traumatic events (of or in routine) from the places occupy as home of security. Similarly, like crime photos taken after a series of misfortunate and disenchanting events, these are “snapshots” taken mostly in the private sector collected to recapture stories untold of the (mis)use of stimulates.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print
35mm print.
35mm print.
C-print.
C-print.
c-print, drywall. Documenting laborers on a residential site when they were drinking on the hour. Measure once, cut a few times.
Geo-graphy, is a series of work that focus on the perspective of the welcoming visitor. As a visitor, they archive stories and histories into sections and parts when geopolitics, in general, are of a complicated matter. Why do we simplify?
Geo-graphy plays at the term, “graph”. As defined, a form to calculate; declare functions, plot points, visualize algebraic equations to animate on view a conclusion. The view almost always results in black and white outcomes. Graphs never really mind the grays of stories and authentic histories told. This work plays with intimate denial and violence through consumption and assumptions created from the outside.
Furthermore: photo(graphs), pie(graphs), picto(graphs), etc.(graphs) present structures to form (overviews) of humanity. The need to declare and understand the grander scope of topics tend to be the end goal. The “graph” fails to capture the injustices and other histories that live within the grayscales in front view.
The topics I investigate are based on the following listed:
Spirituality, religion, whiteness in America, relationships over trade and historic racism and territories claimed by power and war.
Even if the archive and editing often come unannounced as one-sided views; a problematic gesture, there are ways to read the gray scale.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
Print.
Print.
Print.
Print.
printed negative transfer, darkroom enlarger print.
35mm print.
transfer negative print, darkroom enlarger print.
Negative transfer, darkroom print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
35mm print.
Print.
Print.
Print.
(detail) Size varied by the space granted. Handmade ash hardwood, laser burned Persian rug pattern.
24"x varies x 60"in. Drywall, acrylic, colored pencil, 6yr old boy's memories, and 8yr old boy's imagination.
This is a current map of where the "Key holders to a Million Dollar Home" are located. This is an ongoing project until all the keys I own are distributed.
San Francisco Bay Area. The keys are legally donated to me by a property management company based in Northern California. For this piece, chosen participants from all around the United States will be able to purchase a key from me. After the key envelope is signed, the buyer will automatically become “a keyholder to a million dollar home” of an unknown location in a city within the San Francisco Bay Area.
Ash, steel, and hemp.
42"x 39"in. Steel, hydrocal and cement mix.
Ikea frame, laser etched image of a corner moulding, graphite, off white matte.
sheet metal, enamel, and vinyl.
36"x 32"x 67"in. Maple, house paint, and steel.
48"x 48"x 39"in. Plywood, print, vellum, paint, steel, pebble from a $1.3 million dollar listing in San Francisco.
48"x 48"x 21.75"in. Poplar, cinder blocks, hydrocal, mortar, cast concrete.
(detail)
48"x 48"x 10.75"in. Poplar and cast concrete.
(cast concrete detail)
46"x 37"x 67"in. Pine, steel, galvanized steel, rope.
(detail)
32"x 24"x 33.5"in. Forged steel, poplar, pine.
33"x 24"x 28"in. Pine, steel, white oak, and C-clamp.
43"x 57"x 24.5". Steam bent ash, white oak, poplar, and pine.
(detail)
9.35"x 13"x 56"in. waxed rope, steel, and poplar.
2.75"x 2.75"x 33"in. forged steel.
12"x 2"x 17.5"in. Steel.
2.375"x 1.3125"in. Steam twisted walnut and vice grip.
9"x 1.25"x 64"in. Laminated wood, cherry, and enamel.
Cement.
3"x 1"x 3"in. Walnut and stainless steel screw.
leather boots and hydrocal.
A series of work that act as love letters.
(detail) Gold, maple, and glass.
In 2015, Same-Sex marriage was legalized in the United States. I decided to cast my partner’s retainer since the mouth is the most intimate part of one’s body. To me, their mouth is better than a diamond ring.
Cement and plywood.
acrylic and enamel.
Projects that I’ve collaborated with fellow artists and the community.
(interactive)
(interactive)
This is a series of photographs and sketches that fuel the fire to my research and art production.
35mm color print. Closer into the center of Jeddah, new architecture are constantly being built.
35mm color print. Facing from the Red Sea is the old city of Al Balad. Superimposing with the new cityscape of the 21st century on Jeddah.
Fabricated 35mm color prints. Weaved an image of water absorbant pesticide filled mulch from Berkeley, California along with my bed with floral printed blanket from San Francisco's land filled Marina District.
35mm color print. One of many photographs taken of construction sites.
Color Print.
35mm color print.
![Western Wall, Jerusalem, Israel. Jan. 2020--> Judaic-Christian-Muslim [space].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5515f31ae4b07ea6d27e656c/1582110852953-HIRYRDOIPX4698BQ3MA7/WesternWall%28smallerSize%29.jpg)
