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The

Artist

Minh Ngoc Nguyen

Nominated in
2026
By
Fotogalleriet
Lives and Works in
Copenhagen
Minh Ngọc Nguyễn (b. 1992) holds an MFA in Photography from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg and a BA in Visual Communication from the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Copenhagen. Working primarily with staged still-life photography, Nguyễn approaches the medium as both a visual practice and a cultural system, examining how images produce, circulate, and stabilise meanings of identity, desire, and representation. Minh lives and works in Copenhagen.
Projects
2023

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.
Minh Ngoc Nguyen
was nominated by
Fotogalleriet
in
2026
Show all projects
Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.

The selection was conducted through a structured committee process, bringing together both external expertise and internal perspective. Fotogalleriet appointed curator, film and media Researcher and co-founder of Films from the South festival Hilde Herming, and GT Nergaard, photographer, educator and principal at the Norwegian School of Photography. They were joined by Fotogalleriet's own Mikhela Greiner, photographer and project manager, and Dev Dhunsi, communications coordinator, photographer and FUTURES Alum.


Each member independently nominated a shortlist of artists, after which the panel convened to evaluate candidates and reached a unanimous final selection. The four nominated artists represent a breadth of approaches to photography and expanded image-making, united by a shared commitment to rigorous research, community engagement, and the interrogation of identity, memory, materiality and form.


Duy Nguyen's practice moves fluidly between photography, sculpture, installation, and writing, grounded in thorough field and archival research. His work explores the intersections of identity, migration, culture, and materiality, bringing three-dimensional and textual elements into conversation with the photographic image to create layered, cross-disciplinary bodies of work.


Minh Ngoc Nguyen works primarily with staged still-life photography, approaching the medium as both a visual practice and a cultural system. Their work examines how images produce, circulate, and stabilise meaning around identity, desire, and representation, interrogating the conventions and ideological underpinnings of photographic imagery itself.


Ikram Abdulkadir's practice is rooted in the documentary tradition, focusing on family and individuals within familiar urban and domestic settings. Through poetic portraiture and delicate observation, her work explores themes of care, community, and belonging with sensitivity and quiet precision.


Signe Luksengard works across photography, installation, and writing, drawing on a background in both documentary photography and material-based art. Her work examines how emotional experience, labour, and inherited expectations shape the body and leave physical and sensory traces over time, investigating how history, care, and responsibility are carried, both individually and across generations, creating spaces for reflection where presence, vulnerability, and memory can coexist.


The nominated artists were distinguished by the technical and conceptual rigour of their practices, and each reflect Fotogalleriet's commitment to supporting artists who engage deeply with their communities and whose work contributes meaningfully the expanding possibilities of photography as a medium. Fotogalleriet looks forward to supporting their participation in FUTURES 2026 and to the contribution each will make to the network.

Members of the jury:

Hilde Herming - Researcher and curator with a background in film and media studies.

GT Nergaard - Artist born and living in Norway with 30 years of experience as a professional photographer.

Dev Dhunsi - Norwegian–Indian artist. Dev is the Communications Coordinator at Fotogalleriet, as well as a FUTURES alum.

Mikhela Greiner - Norwegian-Canadian visual artist and cultural worker. Mikhela is the project manager and exhibition producer at Fotogalleriet.

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