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Free, booking essential
Live BSL Interpretation
How can creative practice honour lived experience and build spaces where multiple forms of expression are not only welcomed, but valued?
Language is central to how we share and understand our experiences. This conversation explores how artists draw on different forms of creative expression to amplify histories. Here, communication is a relational act shaped by access, memory and care.
Through her photographic practice, Nhu Xuan Hua’s exhibition at Autograph reflects on communication across generations. Her father, who is oral-deaf, communicates in spoken Vietnamese and a self-taught form of French Sign Language he learned after arriving in Paris in the late 1970s. The absence of a shared dialogue within her household profoundly influenced Hua’s artistic practice. With digitally altered archival images, she visualises how memory can fragment and communicate over time.
Hua will be joined by interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and sign language access advocate Nic Annette Miller. Together, they will consider the ways we can connect with one another beyond speech. Moving past the limitations of spoken language, they explore signs, image, observation, and embodied expression as powerful tools for storytelling.
Everyone is welcome to join, from any location. The primary language used will be English.
Closed captioning will be enabled at this Zoom event. During the event, click the closed caption icon to start captions and view the live transcript
Only our event speakers and host will be visible on screen. Attendees will not be visible on screen.
There will be live BSL interpretation during this event
Nhu Xuan Hua (b. 1989) is a French artist and photographer of Vietnamese heritage, working between Paris and London.
Known for her distinctive visual language, she collaborates with international fashion houses such as Dior, Maison Margiela, Kenzo, and Gucci, while contributing to leading publications like Vogue, Time Magazine, and Dazed Beauty.
Originally trained in fashion photography, Hua has gradually shifted toward a multidisciplinary and introspective practice that explores memory, identity, and displacement. Her solo exhibitions at Huis Marseille (Amsterdam) and Fotografie Forum Frankfurt (DE) have marked her emergence as a powerful voice in contemporary photography.
In 2021, she returned to Paris and began weaving personal narrative into her work. Her solo exhibition Hug of a Swan at Huis Marseille reflected on six years of practice, blending fashion commissions with autonomous works tied to her Vietnamese heritage. Her first book, Tropism: Consequences of a Displaced Memory (Area Books), uses family archives and digital manipulation to explore the erosion and transformation of memory. The project was shown at AnneLaure Buffard Inc. during Paris Gallery Weekend 2023 and invited by the Institut français to be part of Photo Hanoi — Vietnam’s first photography biennale.
In 2024, she co-created Heaven and Hell with artist Vimala Pons for the Rencontres d’Arles. This bold, multidisciplinary exhibition merged photography, film, documentary, and sound installation, offering a new sensory and spatial experience of photographic storytelling. Her work is held in public and private collections, including Huis Marseille, the JP Morgan Collection, and CNAP (Centre national des arts plastiques), which recently acquired her piece Family Portrait at the Wedding, Archive from year 85’ for France’s national collection.
Nic Annette Miller is a designer and interdisciplinary artist whose installations use woodcut relief prints, sculpture, and mixed media to explore environmental and cultural themes that push the boundaries of printmaking and paper.
Incorporating video and poetry that reflect Miller’s multilingualism in spoken and sign languages, the overall use of craft becomes a platform for storytelling that conceptualizes relationships through flora, fauna, food, and fondness.
In addition to exhibiting work, Miller’s speciality in print, media, and design with language justice advocacy has led to an extensive experience producing educational programs and research projects with a variety of arts organizations, museums, and university institutions.
Autograph's events are popular and often sell out. We recommend booking a ticket in advance. This event is free.
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Banner image: Nhu Xuan Hua, Swan - Archive from the year 2000 [detail], 2017-2022. © Nhu Xuan Hua. Courtesy of the artist and Anne-Laure Buffard, France.
Speakers: 1) Courtesy Nhu Xuan Hua. 2) Courtesy Nic Annette Miller.
Inspired by: Nhu Xuan Hua, The one who couldn't talk [detail], 2021. © the artist.
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Autograph is a space to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
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