Mèo/Mèo explores the relationship between copy and original through a culturally fragmented lens. Drawing on imagery and iconography from a recent trip to Vietnam, Nguyen interrogates Western depictions of her ancestoral homeland while confronting her own diasporic gaze. This body of work challenges notions of authenticity, cultural ownership, and the uneasy line between homage and exploitation in artistic practice.
Melissa Nguyễn, Mèo/Mèo
15 May.—07 Jun. 2025
Bio
Melissa Nguyen (b.2000) is a Naarm/Melbourne based Vietnamese-Australian artist. Her painting practice explores translation as both subject and methodology, where each gesture is shaped by the instability of perception and the artifice inherent to representation. She is interested in how painting is shaped by interpretation - where every image is influenced by how we see, remember, and translate what is in front of us.
Melissa completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at gthe Victorian College of the Arts (2022). Selected exhibitions include, 'the way a stranger looks' Bus Projects, Melbourne (2025), 'Water Street by Night', West Space Window, Melbourne (2024), 'Ain’t No Party Like An S Club Party', TCB Art Inc, Melbourne (2023), 'Within the without', CAVES, Melbourne (2023), 'Surfeit', Kings Artist Run, Melbourne (2023), 'Everything We Inherit', ISA Art Gallery, Jakarta (2023), 'A Playland of One’s Own', Second Space Projects, Melbourne (2022), L’occitane la prairie Paris Texas Geelong: Cottagecore, Shop Betrayal, Melbourne (2022).
Melissa was awarded the West Space Mentorship and Window Exhibition, West Space x VCA (2023), the Valerie Albsiton Painting Scholarship, University of Melbourne (2021), and was a Majlis Travelling Fellowship Finalist (VCA) (2021) and a finalist in the Castlemaine Experimental Print Prize (2021).
Documentation