ArtBeat + Art With Heart: Phuong Nguyen

ArtBeat launches its special series with Art With Heart, in support of Casey House, with Toronto artist Phuong Nguyen. Early in her practice, Phuong felt a pressure to make work about where she came from. Being Vietnamese seemed to come with an expectation that identity should become subject matter, something she was reluctant to let define the work. Her work eventually found another route through chinoiserie. What interested Phuong was the distance between lived culture and the version of Asia imagined through European decorative traditions. From there, she began looking more closely at ornamentalism and at the ways Asian women have historically been defined through decoration itself. Historical sources often become part of the making process, leading her toward forms that can suggest both ornament and the body. For Art With Heart, Phuong returned to a motif found in a French colonial publication and translated it into a carved wooden form. Its shape begins to suggest a torso or ribcage, with a small ceramic heart placed inside. Phuong also speaks about her work as an art therapist and registered psychotherapist, and about the role stigma can play in preventing people from accessing care and support. Her connection to Casey House is tied closely to that understanding, as well as to something she has been reconsidering in her own life: love and care are not passive. They are things we practise through action, again and again. Art With Heart takes place October 19, 2026, at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. The silent auction opens October 13. Purchase your tickets here. **Artist Bio** Born and raised in Toronto, Phuong Nguyen is a visual artist working across oil painting and sculpture. Her practice explores ornamentalism, Orientalism, and the relationship between personhood and objecthood, drawing on the aesthetics and history of chinoiserie in relation to Southeast Asian and Vietnamese femininity. Nguyen holds a BFA from OCAD University (2014). Phuong is currently represented by Vin Gallery in Asia and Tian Contemporain in Quebec.