One Grand Gallery is pleased to welcome Los Angeles based textile artist Angela Anh Nguyen for her first solo exhibition with the gallery. How We Hegemony documents the reaching effects of authority and positions of power on news, culture, and ideologies in our contemporary society. The bright, bold tufted rugs on display are inspired by the chaos of our modern age, speaking to a cultural status quo and a general state of anxiety. A certain playful levity is fused to these conditions by way of the artist’s insistence on a portrayal so sincere it becomes comical, and so detailed it becomes difficult to look anywhere else but head-on.
In her practice, Nguyen creates works that reflect the larger socio-cultural happenings of the world via colorful, audacious personages. Her figure rugs are a tongue-in-cheek ode to the convoluted rhythm of life, often exaggerated and never serious on the surface. Caricatures such as “ “I’m From Portland” or “Counter Culture among other things…” bring to the surface the ridiculous, albeit true, stereotypes we’ve come to accept as routine. In turn, her larger collaged rugs portray the situations individuals often land themselves in. For How We Hegemony, Nguyen specifically explores the effects of media consumption wherein individuals are forced to respond to agenda setting, trends and norms, ultimately creating a cyclically suffocating status quo. She explains how the attempts of counter-culture and counter-hegemonic practices result in obstacles that fall prey to what they try to oppose. Does counter hegemony exist? How do you counter hegemony if not with hegemonic norms? Beyond this messaging, the show is a light-hearted and amusing attempt to encourage artistic agency in a fine art setting with an installation of works that are as functional as they are visual.
Angela Anh Nguyen, agenda, AGENDA, AGENDA!!!!, 2023
American finer artist Angela Anh Nguyen (b. 1995 California) reinterprets the technique of tufting as an anti-establishment medium of self-expression. Anh Nguyen's meticulously tufted rugs subvert archetypes of American society from a working-class perspective. Her figurative rugs present life-size caricatures drawn from our chaotic modern age, from a bitcoin obsessed stockbroker to a flattened police officer bleeding blue, that speak to our general state of anxiety with a sense of humor and understanding. Her more traditional rectangular and circular "rug-shaped" compositions collage together cartoon characters, newspaper headlines, viral memes, and sports themes - playfully giving form to the mythologies that constitute the cultural ground beneath our feet.
Opening Reception: Friday, April 7, 6–9 PM
Gallery Hours: By Appointment Only