Dyllan Nguyen : Fair Play at Crossing Gallery

Edges by Dyllan Nguyen, 2018/2024 [a left hand holding a ping pong paddle with blades protruding through the surface.]

On exhibition at the Crossing Gallery at the Harvard Ed Portal October 31, 2024 - January 3, 2025 Fair Play by Dyllan Nguyen (Transart MFA 2014) explores the role that play has in human lives as a way to learn and relate to ourselves and others. The object language of table tennis is used as a jumping off point to explore individual difference, acceptance, and building empathy through playful experiences. Visitors are invited to play together or alone, create a new game, imagine their own equipment, and reflect on their experiences of playing across differences.

In January 2015, Current Biology published a McGill University study which showed that by reducing stress through play, humans (and mice) were better able to empathize with the pain of others. Fair Play explores the role play has in human lives as a way to learn, reduce stress, and relate to ourselves and others. Questions that guide the making of the pieces within the larger body of this project include: What if we tried harder to engage those we disagree with? How do differences impact our experience of connecting with one another? What if we created more space to reflect and deepen our ability to see, be, and accept ourselves? Fair Play uses the object language of table tennis and associated objects - paddles, balls, tables, nets - as a jumping off point to explore individual difference, acceptance, and building empathy through playful experiences. Through transforming the normal game of table tennis into something that better reflects how we actually interact with each other in society we can ask how we might take different approaches to what we’re experiencing, how we’re responding, and what we could gain or lose as a result. Audiences may touch, use, and reflect on its components. Visitors play together or alone, create a new game, imagine and make their own equipment, and engage in dreaming through ideating their own versions of the work and reflecting on their experiences.

1. Short Divide by Dyllan Nguyen, 2022 [a ping pong paddle made of interlocking foam tiles with a joint across the middle of the blade]

2. For Reference by Dyllan Nguyen, 2024 [a 1:1 scale ping pong paddle shaped rug with a green face and brown handle with a white ball resting on the surface]

Read more about Dyllan, his process and the exhibition.