beads, crystals, and steel visualize cloud formations within exhibition in china

Tia-Thuy Nguyen translates cloud formations into installations

Vietnamese artist Tia-Thuy Nguyen presents Fields of Resonance at Almine Rech Shanghai, her first solo exhibition in China. On view from August 28th to October 31st, 2026, the exhibition brings together nearly twenty paintings, sculptures, and installations produced using oil paint, beads, sequins, thread, quartz, crystal, recycled glass, stone, and stainless steel. The exhibition continues Nguyen’s engagement with clouds, a recurring motif in her work since 2018. Initially associated with memories of her father, a pilot who served during the Vietnam War, clouds later became part of the artist’s visual diary as she traveled between Asia and Europe. Their changing forms provide a way to explore memory, emotion, and the movement of energy through the natural world.

Like a sky breeze / 2026 / quartz, crystal, and stone / 19 × 13 × 23 cm | all images ©Tia-Thuy Nguyen

Cloud forms take shape through embroidery, minerals, and steel

In Fields of Resonance, the cloud moves beyond the painted image and becomes a material structure. Nguyen constructs cloud forms through embroidery, assembles them from mineral fragments, weaves them from stainless steel, and extends them into the gallery space. Across these different approaches, durable materials are used to express movement, impermanence, and transformation. At the center of the exhibition, the monumental mixed-media work Fairer than a Fairy, measuring 200 by 300 centimeters, presents a cloudscape built from oil paint, thousands of beads, and sequins. The dense accumulation of small elements gives the painted surface physical volume, positioning the work between painting and sculpture. Nguyen’s background in fashion and engagement with Vietnamese craft traditions inform the use of embroidery as a structural technique. Each bead receives and reflects light differently, causing the surface to shift as the viewer moves around it. Changes in position reveal variations in density, color, shadow, and depth, preventing the image from settling into a fixed appearance. The repetitive process of stitching and assembling also makes time and manual labor part of the work. The resulting surface combines the precision of craft with the fluid visual qualities of an atmospheric landscape.

Oil painting provides another approach to the exhibition’s central motif. In Passionate in Supernatural, Nguyen uses the density and fluidity of oil paint to evoke the atmosphere following a storm. Turquoise, deep violet, orange, and gold overlap across the canvas, suggesting moisture, changing light, and suspended movement. The painting does not reproduce a specific cloud formation. Instead, the shifting relationship between color and pigment expresses the transition between darkness and light, turbulence and calm. Unlike the structured surfaces of the embroidered works, the oil paintings retain the movement of the medium, leaving their forms open and visually unstable. In Another Day of Sun and Like a Sky Breeze, the artist shifts from painted surfaces to compact sculptural compositions made from quartz, crystal, recycled glass, and stone. Their transparency and reflective qualities allow the surrounding light to become part of the works. 

Enduring Vitality / 2026 / stainless steel / 700 x 150 cm

Completed in 2026, Like a Sky Breeze measures 19 by 13 by 23 centimeters. Quartz and crystal fragments gather over a stone base to form an irregular volume resembling a cloud during condensation. White, pale blue, violet, and golden tones appear across the mineral surfaces as light changes. The sculpture combines the physical weight of stone with the visual lightness of crystal. Its angular surfaces suggest both geological permanence and atmospheric change, reconstructing a transient natural form through materials associated with durability and accumulation. Quartz also carries and refracts light through its structure. Instead of applying brightness to the surface, Nguyen allows the material itself to absorb, redirect, and release light. The appearance of the sculpture consequently changes according to its surroundings and the viewer’s position. 

The Pause Between Storms introduces Nguyen’s stainless-steel weaving technique. Fine metal strands are bent, joined, and woven into cloud formations that occupy physical space. The material brings an industrial and structurally resistant quality to a process traditionally associated with softer fibers. Through repetitive weaving, the stainless steel is manipulated into forms that appear lightweight and delicate while retaining the material’s structural properties. From a distance, the restrained gray palette and fine lines recall landscape etchings. At closer range, knots, bends, folds, and joints reveal the physical process behind each work. Nguyen leaves the steel in its original metallic state, allowing light to move directly across the surface. Highlights and shadows shift as viewers change position, producing the visual impression of movement within a physically stable structure. 

The works bring together a textile-based method of making and an industrial material. Weaving becomes a sculptural process through which strength and delicacy, permanence and impermanence, are held within the same form. Stainless steel takes on a larger spatial role in Enduring Vitality, a seven-meter-long installation in which branching tree forms extend across the gallery floor and walls. Here, steel replaces the drawn line, moving the image from a flat surface into the architecture. The branches twist, overlap, and separate according to the viewer’s position. Their metallic lines operate simultaneously as drawing, structure, and sculpture, while shadows cast across the surrounding surfaces create an additional layer of lines and forms. The tree introduces a grounded counterpart to the exhibition’s cloud motif. Its roots establish a sense of stability, while its branches extend upward through continuous growth. The two motifs are connected through the circulation of natural energy: water rises, condenses, returns to the earth, and supports new life. The cloud disperses and changes, while the tree remains rooted while continuing to develop.

Material contrasts connect painting, sculpture, and installation

The materials throughout Fields of Resonance are selected for their physical and visual properties. Oil paint provides fluidity and depth; beads and sequins introduce texture, reflected light, and volume; thread records repetition and manual labor; quartz and crystal refract light through solid matter; recycled glass introduces fragmentation and transformation; and stainless steel provides strength while functioning as fiber, line, and spatial structure. Nguyen retains the distinct qualities of each material instead of disguising them. Steel does not imitate thread, and crystal does not replicate pigment. Their differences become part of the composition. Soft materials accumulate until they acquire weight, while rigid materials are bent and woven into forms that appear delicate.

This movement between materials parallels Nguyen’s practice across painting, fashion, craft, sculpture, and installation. The boundaries between these disciplines remain open: a bead can function as color, light, texture, and volume; a steel strand can operate as line, structure, and image; a canvas can become a relief; and a drawing can expand into architectural space. Across the exhibition, natural motifs are used as structures through which internal and external states intersect. Clouds, trees, light, and mineral formations connect memory with material processes and the viewer’s physical presence. The title Fields of Resonance refers to this exchange. Memories generate images, light activates materials, movement changes perception, and the viewer’s position establishes new relationships between individual works and the gallery. The exhibition develops through recurring contrasts between light and weight, softness and resistance, stillness and movement, permanence and change. These relationships are expressed through painting, stitching, weaving, joining, bending, and assembly.

Across different scales and materials, Nguyen transforms atmospheric and natural forms into physical structures. Clouds become embroidered surfaces, mineral bodies, and woven metal formations, while trees become steel lines extending through space. Light connects these different materials, continually altering their appearance and relationship to the gallery. Fields of Resonance consequently approaches nature as a changing force that moves between memory, matter, light, and the processes of making.

Passionate in Supernatural / 2024 / oil on canvas / 160 x 200 cm

The Pause Between Storms / 2026 / stainless steel / 60 x 240 cm

Fairer than a Fairy / 2026 / beadwork and sequins on canvas / 200 × 300 cm

Another Day of Sun / 2026 / Quartz, cullet and beads / 30 x 30 cm

Passionate in Supernatural / 2024 / oil on canvas / 160 x 200 cm

artist Tia-Thuy Nguyen (center)

project info:

name: Fields of Resonance

designer: Tia Thuy Nguyen | @tia.thuynguyen

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. See more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: Christina Vergopoulou | designboom