OpenWalls Spotlight is a British Journal of Photography award in collaboration with WePresent and Galerie Huit Arles
©Anh Nguyen
Anh Nguyen’s The Kitchen God Series will be exhibited at Galerie Huit Arles from 07 July, alongside single image winners Akanksha Pandey, Alex Kurunis, Andrew Kung and Tim Benson
In Vietnamese folklore, the ‘Kitchen Gods’ are three spirits that reside in every home: omniscient figures watching over the family, ensuring domestic affairs are in order, until the last day of the Lunar New Year, when they return to Heaven to give the Jade Emperor an annual report.
Having moved from her native Saigon to New York City a decade ago, the photographer Anh Nguyen began to wonder what a Kitchen God would see if they looked at her modern American life: the parts of Vietnamese heritage she was holding on to or adapting, and the parts she was questioning or leaving behind. She also adopted the role of Kitchen God herself – entering her friends’ homes to survey how they were doing the same.
©Anh Nguyen
“I was inspired by this ‘in-between’ space that many people in my generation who decide to move away from home exist in”
– Anh Nguyen
Her resulting photographic project, The Kitchen God Series, is the winner of BJP’s 2025 OpenWalls Award in partnership with WePresent, the arts platform of WeTransfer and Galerie Huit Arles. Using food as a focus point, it is a staged and eccentric exploration of how cultural identity and ritual show up in the homes of New York’s Vietnamese youth; how our connection to culture can evolve outside of, and away from, its original context. It also invites the audience to take on the role of a Kitchen God.
“I was inspired by this ‘in-between’ space that many people in my generation who decide to move away from home exist in,” Nguyen says. “We maintain a living connection to Vietnam. We also get to take part in American culture. But sometimes we struggle with access to both in different ways. It’s a new space of identity that requires a new language, and I see my visual approach as a way of building that.”
Nguyen comes from a photojournalism background, but The Kitchen God Series is far from documentary. “It’s an impossible task to try to find ‘truth’ in any one thing,” she says – and so the myth of the Kitchen Gods became a playground for exploring identity through both reality and fiction; folklore and personal history. The images are subjective, performative, uniquely stylised; much like individuals’ approaches to tradition itself.
From friends staring uncomfortably down the lens as they raise a glass over food, to Nguyen herself, trouserless and snacking in her bedroom, the playful awkwardness and palpable intimacy of the images is what makes them so compelling: there is an unnerving sense that you have just walked into a room you are not supposed to be in. That sense of secrecy between viewer and image also reflects the guilt, even shame, Nguyen explains, about what goes on behind closed doors that you might not want a Kitchen God, or your family, to see – such as eating in bed, or sex.
“I felt this series represented the most perfectly developed and thoughtful response to our 2025 theme. Through her vibrant, at times even startling, photographic images, Anh Nguyen creates a contemporary discussion about cultural identity whilst exploring the symbolism of ancient culinary rituals.”
– Julia de Bierre, Gallery Director, Galerie Huit Arles and OpenWalls Spotlight Judge
In one of the more explicitly erotic images, the white of a quail egg dribbles from open red lips – a nod to the creation myth of the Vietnamese people (how they originated from eggs borne by the mountain goddess Au Co and the dragon king Lac Long Quan), but also the tension between modern expressions of desire and traditional Vietnamese views.
In another image, a traditional Vietnamese offering table (intended to invite the souls of loved ones back to Earth) sits outside an urban apartment door, featuring grocery-store flowers and vegan ‘meats’ (“meat is such a large part of Vietnamese culture, and it’s unthinkable to my parents that I choose to be vegetarian,” Nguyen says).
“I was very inspired by how myths get retold through generations,” she says, “and how every version of a story can have the same ‘pieces’ that make up the whole – but the bigger picture can look different for everyone.”
Nguyen recalls how, when she put together her own offering tables with her family as a girl, she had always thought there was a right or wrong way to do it. But her mother would simply tell her to “place things wherever it feels right”. And therein lies a joyful message of The Kitchen God Series. Ritual and tradition need not be dogmatic or prescriptive. More than this, they are inherently interpretive: open to change, compromise, fusion, even play.
“For me, it’s also about questioning the ‘authenticity’ of culture,” Nguyen adds. “I’m not an authentic speaker for my culture, nor do I claim to be. But the point is that any performance of ritual is interpretive – and there is no such thing as authenticity.”
©Anh Nguyen
©Anh Nguyen
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, after which some 2 million Vietnamese refugees arrived in the US, giving rise to the rich Vietnamese American community that exists today. It is a timely moment for The Kitchen God Series to be exhibited at Galerie Huit Arles; the show opens on Monday 07 July, and will run alongside Les Rencontres d’Arles.
Also making up the exhibition are the OpenWalls 2025 single image winners: Alex Kurunis, Akanksha Pandey, Tim Benson and Andrew Kung.
Kurunis’ winning image ‘Olympos’ captures Greek Orthodox Easter Friday in a remote village in Karpathos, where community members pay respects to those who have passed. Pandey’s ‘My Daughter, Bonita’, meanwhile, celebrates a young trans girl who is challenging long-standing patriarchal norms in a small village in India.
Benson’s ‘About to Leave’ is a poignant portrait of his father, a first-generation immigrant caught between Kenya and the UK, while Kung’s ‘Echoes of the Pear Garden’ documents the New York City Chinese opera troupes dedicated to preserving the art form in America.
“All the winning work is a clear testament to how migration and the diaspora shape emerging culture and subculture,” reflects Dalia Al-Dujaili, online editor of British Journal of Photography, and a judge of this year’s OpenWalls Award.
“It’s something we need to keep at the front of our minds as border control cracks down globally and migrants are villainised. The work reminds us that though we might lose old traditions, rituals and stories when we move, or when we evolve into something new, we also gain something in return – we create new identities, we forge the unseen.”
OpenWalls Spotlight is at Galerie Huit Arles Monday 07 July to Sunday 20th July.
WeTransfer, the most creative platform for sharing ideas, makes it easy for creators to share and distribute content, and collaborate with teams. With an average of 80 million monthly active users in 190 countries, WeTransfer is a long-time champion of using business as a force for good. WePresent is WeTransfer’s Academy-award winning arts platform, acting as the company’s cultural torchbearer and creative commissioning body. Collaborating with emerging young talent to renowned artists, WePresent showcases the best in art, photography, film, music and more, championing diversity in everything it does. The platform’s commissions range from editorial features to films, illustrations, photography series, events, and exhibitions, with an aim to offer a fresh take on the magic and mystery of creative ideas.
Galerie Huit Arles is situated in a 17th century mansion in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Arles, France. The Provencal town is renowned for its Roman monuments, world-class museums, the painter Vincent Van Gogh, the Luma Foundation, and prestigious Arts Festivals. Founded in 2007 Galerie Huit Arles has acquired a solid reputation for the careful selection of its artists – both established and emerging – and the quality of its hangings and installations. Exhibitions are curated either independently or in collaboration. Partners have included: The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Factum Arte Madrid, The British Journal of Photography, City Hall Kuala Lumpur, and Galerie SIT DOWN, Paris.
