In this talk, Dr Patricia Nguyen will discuss a selection of her solo and collaborative artistic projects that centre on water, earth, air, and fire as the core materials for her performance research and meditations on war, forced migration, refugees, humanitarian aid, and resettlement. Central to her practice is đ𝘢̂́𝘵 𝘯𝘶̛𝘰̛́𝘤, which, translated from Vietnamese means both “land and water” and “country/nation/homeland.” Land and water are significant geopolitical and aesthetic materials that Dr Nguyen experiments with, exploring how their absence/presence to understand the relationship between sustenance, forced migration, and the politics of life/death.