Maya Nguyen | huh ugh uh hm mhm

July 11 – September 12, 2025

Appointments recommended: call 206-634-0919 or email jsp@jackstraw.org.

Opening reception: Friday, July 11, 7pm
In person at Jack Straw Cultural Center

Artist Talk: Friday, September 12, 7pm
In person at Jack Straw Cultural Center and streaming via YouTube and Facebook

Youth and Family workshop: Saturday, September 13, 2-4pm
Write education@jackstraw.org for more information or to sign up.

In a conversation between four speakers, various fragments of linguistic detritus form a love language for when you have nothing left to say because you understand one other so well that you complete each other’s sentences before you even begin to speak. As shhhs, ummmms, and ooohs! fill the room with teasing snippets of interpersonal drama, the syllables usually discarded to the margins now take center stage. And tonight they are dancing like there is no tomorrow. Because when the water rises above our heads, there will be no time for long excuses about why you did not say what you wanted to say when you wanted to say it. And anyway, sometimes all it takes is a wink of the tongue for the ear to get the hint. Ta Da! . . . Oh La La!

Artists

Portrait of Maya Nguyen with a bright green monochromatic background.

Maya Nguyen

Maya Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Russian interdisciplinary artist with a focus on  sound performance and diasporic making. She gathers speech fragments, urban recordings, body movements, migratory routes, sounds imitating nature…

READ MORE >