Wallflower, 2024

A personal painting that exposes my emotions growing up as a minority in Australia. My family overcame great challenges to escape the Vietnam War; building the very boat they escaped with, to start from nothing in a foreign country. My siblings and I grew up with nothing, but we also grew up with everything. We grew up navigating cultural traditions, but we also just wanted to fit in. Like many others, the cards we were dealt with in life naturally made us feel like outsiders. Such challenges interplayed with the beauty of life and the solitude of a wallflower.

I am not the best at finding the right words to write books, but I can visualise and create artwork that tell stories frozen in time. My art originates from my lived experiences and the current social, political and cultural complexities that shape our identities. I take a critical view of how such issues affects humankind and I metaphorically explore the emotions beyond our façade. My artworks are subjective and surreal interpretations, but I find connections with things I see every day, painting the familiar in unfamiliar ways. I predominantly utilise oils as my medium, but my surfaces vary from traditional canvas to made to measure wood to paint contemporary ideas.

Catherine Nguyen-Hoang is a self-taught emerging contemporary artist with a focus on painting and drawing. She approaches her art through a narrative-first approach, with a purpose of creating inspiring works that many people can relate with. She paints metaphors and imagery that tells her story and her lived experiences. Recently, Catherine was shortlisted as a finalist in the 2024 Ravenswood Art Prize for Women, 2023 National Emerging Artist Prize and the 2024 SALA Don Dunstan Foundation Art Prize.