Claire Nguyễn is a storyteller, community organizer, and ceramic artist currently based in Lenapehoking (Philadelphia, PA) by way of the unceded lands of the Ohlone Muwekma (San Jose, California); Sài Gòn, Việt Nam; and Hải Phòng, Việt Nam. As a child of Vietnamese refugees who survived war, poverty, and intergenerational trauma from their resettlement in the United States, they come from a lineage of artists who use their hands and creativity to access joy and to heal.

Claire is a theater kid at heart and budding ceramicist who uses art and storytelling in their political practices to generate healing from their community’s inheritance of trauma due to war, imperialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. They began taking wheelthrowing classes after finishing college in the fall of 2022 during a transformative year through which they began their own healing journey to tend to the ongoing impact of war, capitalism, and white supremacy on their own life.

As they wedged their first balls of clay, Claire felt an ancestral connection to the material and art form. They are interested in how ceramic villages in their ancestral lands sourced materials from the geography around them and how these practices were disrupted by war and imperialism - similar to how these forces severed them and their family from their ancestral lands. Their art seeks to capture the resilience of handmade ceramic pots that continue to stand the test of time and memorialize their beauty and function by their makers throughout history.