new works by Christine Nguyen        

                                      August 14 - September 26, 2004                                     

About the Imagine Nation Series

For the past few years, I have been working on a series called 'Imagine Nation' combining drawing and photography.   I begin by drawing intuitively, allowing short personal narratives develop within the drawings. My imagination takes over and visualizes the formation, sound and movement of creatures, as well as events and sites in this fantastic imaginary space that I have created. I envision this world to exist in a realm similar to outer space that is expansive by large and/or on a micro level of cells in which everything becomes smaller and smaller. The pictorial imagery fluctuates between the macro and micro worlds. It can also be pushed into the abstract realm of the web. What is among all the mentioned realms is the unknown and infinite.

             Although the drawings I have created do act like maps, they are maps without boundaries. The drawings vary with many different types of life forms and sites. Some pieces connect by continuing a story from one piece to another while others are in another part of this mysterious world existing either at a continuous time or at different time rate. A being's past could be another being's future. Some creatures evolve differently from others, having a variety of life spans. For instance, the average lifespan of a butterfly (depending on species) would be about a month to a year being extremely short compared to the average human under good conditions.

I really find myself discovering more about this imaginary world as I create various type of systems. Some of these systems include but not limited to transportation, communication, technological advances (the function of collecting information and sharing/spreading the knowledge to further growth of this world), transformations, energy and creatures that are structural hybrids of the machine and organic that occur naturally.  I am also conscious of having no wasteful materials. All waste materials in all forms are a source of energy/food for another being creating an ecotopia. Like all things that evolve, death and decay is present coinciding with procreation and birth.

 I am also interested in the biological and social interactions between the imaginary beings. One example would be how the imaginary beings relate to other beings, what their main "duties" of existence are, and how they contribute to this recycled world where everything connects to other things and relies on some other being or thing to exist. The beings are constantly traveling, sharing information, distributing various resources, and constructing cities that are almost ritualistic.  Compelled to investigate this world's ecosystem and social beings I find 'Imagine Nation' to be a lifetime project.