Sweet, Sweet Nectar

I began this work as a way of examining how images and image culture inscribe national identity through fetishisation and appropriation. Having been trained as a commercial photographer, I am familiar with the mechanical and psychological strategies behind advertising images. These include lighting, seamless digital edits, and polished dream worlds designed to disappear into the background of commodity consumption. Because this visual language is one I know but remain skeptical of, it felt like an appropriate framework to work within. The project combines conventions of commercial studio photography with still life, a genre rooted in deliberate fabrication. Still life allows objects to be removed from their original contexts and reassigned new meanings and values, a process that mirrors photography itself. I am interested in how careful lighting and controlled composition collide with cheaply produced plastic objects, exposing the constructed nature of the image. As a Vietnamese kid born and raised in Denmark, I primarily consumed Western media, which shaped my understanding of identity and contributed to forms of internalised racism that I am now trying to unlearn through my work. By deconstructing and reconstituting specific objects, stereotypes, foods, and domestic commodities associated with Southeast Asian culture, alongside scenes drawn from personal memory, I question how these images circulate. Through this process, I aim to reclaim these forms from flattened representations and develop a visual language that is seductive, critical, and self aware. The work reflects my experience of identity as constructed and unstable, shaped by belonging and renegotiated through images.