PAULINE OOSTERHOFF—NAILS

In this salon, a nail treatment is not an anonymous transaction. Through documentary video and personal interaction, the audience is introduced to the migration history of the nail artist sitting across the table. With these personal stories and intimate encounters, Pauline Oosterhoff opens the door to a larger story about labor migration and its complex  entanglement with the nail industry, which she has been studying over the past decade. 

Nail salons as we know them today are an innovation of Vietnamese refugees. After the fall of South Vietnamese  Saigon on April 30, 1975, many Vietnamese fled to Eastern Europe, Hong Kong and America. The actress Tippi  Hedren (known from, among others, The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock) visited a Vietnamese refugee camp in California.  The Vietnamese refugees saw a future in the film star’s painted nails. The actress’s nail technician trained a group of  twenty refugee women. These twenty Vietnamese women played a key role in the creation of a global industry. They opened salons in low-rent neighborhoods populated by migrants and black Americans, where Vietnamese stylists collaborated with their clients to develop exuberant nail styles at an affordable price. After the fall of the Berlin wall, many Vietnamese left Eastern Europe, where they worked or studied. Not long after, salons also appeared in Western Europe with a new, versatile range of nail art. 

The work is an ode to the cultural and economic contributions of Vietnamese migrants and refugees. Many of the nail artists Pauline filmed for her research are well-educated or do nails to pay for their studies. After all, the vast majority  of recent migrants migrate through legitimate channels. Some are the children born and raised in the Netherlands  of the refugees from South Vietnam. In the exhibition, Oosterhoff also draws our attention to the black pages of  Vietnamese migration history. On October 23, 2019, 39 Vietnamese, many on their way to work in nail salons,  suffocated in a meat refrigerator at sea between Zeebrugge and Purfleet (UK). In the exhibition she asks the public to commemorate these 39 deceased Vietnamese migrant workers with incense. 

On the one hand, the Netherlands embodies a sense of international solidarity, freedom and hedonism and attracts  people from all over the world, says Oosterhoff. At the same time, in recent years there has been increasing  polarization on topics such as growing inequality, immigration, our colonial history and our role in the slave trade. Nails seeks the nuance in this debate and urges the public to unravel the anonymity and invisibility of our social-commercial  interactions and to embrace the human dimension. 

On June 2, Pauline Oosterhoff will give a lecture. Together with Matt Steinglass (Europe correspondent, The Economist) she will facilitate a dialogue with Vietnamese and Dutch-Vietnamese (nail) artists, entrepreneurs and  policymakers about the charged dynamics between nails and migration.


ABOUT PAULINE OOSTERHOFF
As a visual artist and social scientist, Pauline Oosterhoff investigates ‘public secrets’, matters that everyone knows but is unwilling or unable to acknowledge in public. Her work invites the viewer to reflect on their choices and opinions about ‘the other’. She creates autonomous work, as well as commissioned work. Pauline lived and worked in Vietnam for eight years. Since 2003 she has been making films, installations, research and programs with Vietnamese people,  including a shelter for victims of human trafficking in Hanoi. Her work with Vietnamese women has received several  awards, including the World Bank Innovation Award. As a researcher, she specializes in voluntary and involuntary migration, including human trafficking and other forms of modern slavery. She is working on a book; The Miraculous History of Nail Salons: How Vietnamese reinvented the nail salon and changed global beauty. 


ÐǍNG-VŨ ĎǍNG
The exhibition also contains a work by Dutch-Vietnamese artist Đăng-Vũ Đặng, who, as a descendant of Vietnamese boat refugees, poetically explores his family history through edible sculptures. As a descendant of Vietnamese boat refugees, he recalls Vietnam’s colonial history and his family’s migration history through edible sculptures. He explores food as a vehicle to transfer love, culture and identity and the act of cooking as a way to preserve. His performative work Consuming Love and Violence/  Sinh Ra Từ Mảnh Vỡ (Born From Shards), which is on show, consists of pandan-coconut and coffee-condensed milk flavored jellies that he will cook and cast on site. By replicating shards of a war-damaged Nguyễn-dynasty imperial  tomb in the flavors of his youth, he invites the audience to eat and converse with him. By doing so he aims to invoke compassion for the violent conditions that force refugees to flee their country. 



OPENING during HOOGTIJ
May 26, 19:00—23:00 h 

OPENING HOURS
27 + 28 May and 3 + 4 June, 11:00—17:00 h 

ARTIST TALK
2 June, 19:00 h doors open, 19:30 h start

Visitors can book a nail treatment here. A limited selection of treatments is available. It will take about 20 minutes and costs €14. 

LOCATION 
Stille Veerkade 19
The Hague 

Free entrance and wheelchair accessible

Nails is supported by Creative Industries Fund NL