Hong Anh Pham
Hong Anh Pham is an artist and designer trained as a psychologist.
Her research-based practice critically examines the impact of technology on society and psychological experience through multimedia works, sculptural objects, and the recontextualisation of interfaces.
She lives and works between Berlin and Zürich, studies Design & Computation at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and TU Berlin, and is currently guesting the New Media class at UdK Berlin.
Hong Anh Pham — Artifacts of Aesthetic Labour
Potential Energy — Energy Potential — Winter 2025
Artifacts of Aesthetic Labour is a sculptural work that draws parallels between commercial red-light therapy devices and the cultural and historical use of ritual masks across societies. Traditionally embedded in spiritual, ceremonial, and performative contexts, masks are here recontextualised through contemporary beauty technologies that promise renewal, youth, and transformation through scientific claims rather than mystical belief. Predominantly marketed to women, their repeated, almost ceremonial use positions aesthetic maintenance as a daily practice. Embellished with appropriated spiritual objects, including incense, selenite crystals, and pendulums, the work reflects on how spirituality is aestheticised and commodified within beauty and self-optimisation culture, rendering self-care as continuous, unpaid labour.
