A pale blue face peers from a thicket of black branches, its tilted gaze cut by a diagonal limb. Watercolor sits in thin washes, charcoal like blacks knot the surface into a web, and the figure’s smooth planes sharpen against those rough strokes. The cropped head, wide eyes, and high-key blue read as vulnerable rather than cute, so the title lands with quiet irony.

Commissioned for Mekong Review, the quarterly literary magazine devoted to writing from and about mainland Southeast Asia, the image carries the magazine’s tone of lucid, pared-back storytelling. The title also nods to the art-historical idea of naïve art, known for childlike simplicity and flattened space, a reference point that Nguyen filters through disciplined drawing and stark contrasts. He favors economy of mark and a single emblem that anchors the frame, letting rhythm and tone do the narrative work.