Patricia Nguyễn

Patricia Nguyễn, PhD, is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago. She is an assistant professor in Asian American Studies and the Council for Race and Ethnic Studies at Northwestern University, where she earned her PhD in Performance Studies. Through embodied research, performance, installation, and community-based praxis, she explores ecologies of freedom, migration, borders, and war to reveal histories of violence and imagine abolitionist futures. Community engagement is a fundamental ethos of social justice work and her practice as an artist with over fifteen years of experience. She critically engages with publics through curated happenings as sites of performance interventions and platforms for dialogue, healing, and community building. She has exhibited and performed at the Nha San Collective in Vietnam, Mission Cultural Center, Prague Quadrennial, Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Dr. Nguyễn is also cofounder and executive director of Axis Lab, an arts and architecture organization. Her published work appears in Women Studies Quarterly, Harvard Kennedy School’s Asian American Policy Review, Women and Performance, and The Funambulist. Dr. Nguyễn is also an award-winning memorial designer for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project, the first monument in the United States to honor survivors of police violence.