Nails

Nails is an interactive art installation that explores the fraught dynamics of the beauty industry, race and migration. Together with Vietnamese nail-shop owners and stylists, I created a working nail shop in a glass pavilion at Amsterdam’s renowned Rietveld Art Academy. Through documentary video and personal interaction, audience members are introduced to the migrant backgrounds of the stylists while having their own nails done. The installation is in part a tribute to the 39 Vietnamese migrant workers, many of them aspiring nail stylists, who died in a lorry container in Essex in October 2019.