Studio Chapple
February 2023










Text by Louis Chapple
Studio/chapple is delighted to present Durian Revolution, the first solo exhibition by Hoa Dung Clerget.
Clerget’s practice is centred on the artisanal production of objects that take on a narrative dimension on
the themes of the domestic and displacement. Her works affirm their materiality through gestures
borrowed from everyday life, the ones of the women in her family and community.
For Durian Revolution, Clerget has staged a reimagining of the nail salon, where only fluids and odours -
both toxic and attractive - remain. Taking inspiration from the durian fruit, hyperbolic in its soft flesh
and spiked shell, exterior beauty and fetid stench, Durian Revolution features a new series of threedimensional
paintings made with the techniques and materials of Nail Art.
The defensive odour of the durian, from which these paintings derive their title, becomes a distant
reference; a sensation evoked by metonymy and substitution. Instead, it is replaced by the toxic smells of
acetone and chemical acrylic that the artist has been exposed to for several months.
By projecting the fruit onto the canvas, Clerget reverses its status as food and pays homage to its cultural
heritage. She uses nail polish as a ready-made, and recent nail art techniques as a painting process, thus
amalgamating the categories of nail art and art, subculture and ‘high’ culture.
Fluid and ephemeral, ‘Narcomorphous’ acts as a writhing installation around which the series of paintings
orbit. Taking inspiration from the Quynh Flower (Queen of the Night) that blooms for one night a year, the
installation erupts and retreats across the gallery floor, its gestural unpredictability indicative of its own
making process.
Durian Revolution unites two sensory shields of armour through an investigation into the toxicity of
beauty, women’s labour, and the nail salon as instigator of social transgression, imagination and
transformation within diasporic communities.
Studio/chapple is delighted to present Durian Revolution, the first solo exhibition by Hoa Dung Clerget.
Clerget’s practice is centred on the artisanal production of objects that take on a narrative dimension on
the themes of the domestic and displacement. Her works affirm their materiality through gestures
borrowed from everyday life, the ones of the women in her family and community.
For Durian Revolution, Clerget has staged a reimagining of the nail salon, where only fluids and odours -
both toxic and attractive - remain. Taking inspiration from the durian fruit, hyperbolic in its soft flesh
and spiked shell, exterior beauty and fetid stench, Durian Revolution features a new series of threedimensional
paintings made with the techniques and materials of Nail Art.
The defensive odour of the durian, from which these paintings derive their title, becomes a distant
reference; a sensation evoked by metonymy and substitution. Instead, it is replaced by the toxic smells of
acetone and chemical acrylic that the artist has been exposed to for several months.
By projecting the fruit onto the canvas, Clerget reverses its status as food and pays homage to its cultural
heritage. She uses nail polish as a ready-made, and recent nail art techniques as a painting process, thus
amalgamating the categories of nail art and art, subculture and ‘high’ culture.
Fluid and ephemeral, ‘Narcomorphous’ acts as a writhing installation around which the series of paintings
orbit. Taking inspiration from the Quynh Flower (Queen of the Night) that blooms for one night a year, the
installation erupts and retreats across the gallery floor, its gestural unpredictability indicative of its own
making process.
Durian Revolution unites two sensory shields of armour through an investigation into the toxicity of
beauty, women’s labour, and the nail salon as instigator of social transgression, imagination and
transformation within diasporic communities.
artists: Hoa Dung Clerget and KV Duong
Canning Gallery, London
May 2022




curator: Jerry Guo
ZÉUÌ
May 2022
Monument for D. Flavin (2022)Faux fur, perspex, synthetic hair, metal, neon light


Group show curated by Louis Chapple
Hackney Down Studios
November 2021
Solo show
1B Window Gallery
April 2022
Flowers from Nowhere
Lotus seeds hand strung, neon light



