tên tôi: On-Site with Nguyễn Ngọc Thảo

15 Jul 2025 - 10 Aug 2025
Various Times
FREE
First Site Gallery Storey Hall Basement, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne

Names can connect us and embody our stories. tên tôi is a community-driven project that embraces and celebrates ethnic names through bead-making workshops and participatory installations.

Nguyễn Ngọc Thảo is an artist, curator and educator who lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. Her current art and research practice focusses on the weaponisation of language against Asian Australians, and how creative practice can notice, understand and ultimately resist against the impacts of Whiteness. tên tôi embraces and celebrates ethnic names through community-based workshops and a participatory art installation.

First Site visitors are invited to engage in an exchange; to 'take' and/or 'leave' a name, contributing to a collective narrative of identity and belonging. Visitors can craft bracelets with names of their choosing, using unique ceramic and clay beads handmade by individuals from across Canada, America, Japan, and Australia. They can then choose to leave this name bracelet for another person to take, and/or take an existing name bracelet.

Opening Hours

11am - 5pm Tuesday to Friday

Closed on public and University holidays

Info for schools and groups of more than 10

Upcoming events

VENTUROUS: Design Practice Research Futures in Architecture & Urban Design

31 Jul 2026 - 19 Sep 2026

VENTUROUS brings together the projects and design explorations of innovative contemporary architects and designers associated with the RMIT University School of Architecture & Urban Design’s groundbreaking design practice PhD program, over the last decade.

Aleksander Morris, 'Memory Tides'

25 Aug 2026 - 18 Sep 2026

'Memory Tides' is a series of paintings drawn from the artist’s family archive, using water as a metaphor for memory, movement and dislocation within the Jewish diaspora.

Stav Lampropoulou 'The Wandering Womb and Other Myths'

25 Aug 2026 - 18 Sep 2026

'The Wandering Womb and Other Myths' is an immersive exhibition that reimagines the myth of the “wandering womb” to examine and confront gendered histories that have systemically silenced women’s voices.

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

Learn more about our commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

tên tôi: On-Site with Nguyễn Ngọc Thảo