“The white shirt, if you think globally, is associated with the spread of colonialism ... so you know, brown people ‘making themselves respectable’ by wearing the white shirt, then working in service industries,” she says. “But James also talks about how then the white shirt gets adopted by those communities ... who make it their own and use it in their own ways. So, it’s a very complicated, hybrid, evolving process.”

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Growing up, Nguyen’s family had a textile factory in western Sydney. When he was a child working there, it was a collective enterprise. He’s interested in the safety, joy and protection collectives can offer, but also the tensions, expectations and difficulties they can involve.

“When we were putting the work together, we had to hand-stitch it together,” McSpedden says. “So it’s been a labour of love, but that feels really appropriate. James actually taught us all these wonderful stitching techniques [he was taught by his family]. He often gets his mum and his aunties to help him.”

Open Glossary feels like several shows within one, each room dedicated to a different work with a different collaborator, including Tamsen Hopkinson, Budi Sudarto, Kate ten Buuren and Chris Xu. Ideas around identity, culture and language recur throughout.

It confronts ideas about access and blockage, what can be translated, the gaps and slippage between understandings and cross-cultural exchange.

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In the second room, Nguyen had intended to create an “open glossary”, like an online spreadsheet into which people from multicultural, multifaith and LGBTQ communities could add terms around sexuality and identity. When he came out to his parents in his 20s, he had a very limited vocabulary with which to do so. “If you’re a migrant here, you miss out on the language of your queer communities back home. And even here, you don’t belong,” he says.

Given the hate experienced by the trans community of late, the glossary site opening has been delayed.

Nguyen describes the third room, Hui Hụi, created with Maori artist Tamsen Hopkinson, as “high minimalism”. Reflecting a common element of ritual in each of their cultures – and many more – it uses ash and burning as a cleansing. Hopkinson will paint ash on a large square in the middle of the darkened room and, after removing their shoes, visitors are invited to contemplate the space and, if they choose, walk through the ash floor. “We were thinking about how to use this space in a way that’s transformative,” Nguyen says.

McSpedden says it asks us to think about coming together and how we create a gathering space between difference.

For the final space, created with Kate ten Buuren, there are dioramas and zines about a possum named Lerty. Appealing to children and adults alike, it looks at how we find our voice in the world. Masks depicting native animals line the wall, which visitors can wear, as well as creating their own.

Supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, Open Glossary is the second of the fund’s partnerships series, which underwrites new commissions by mid-career and established visual artists.

James Nguyen: Open Glossary is at ACCA from September 16 to November 19. An artist’s talk will be held at ACCA at 4pm on September 16.

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