HUG 2 is one of the first works of the young female painter Hoang Dung Nguyen, an alumna of the Vietnam University of Fine Art. In 2020, she co-founded the 42 Painting Studio Club, a group of young artists with the goal of promoting teamwork in a setting where artists often prefer to work independently. Right from these early days, Hoang Dung’s paintings have tended to be semi-abstract or geometrically abstract. Unintentionally, the mysterious image in HUG 2 evokes an ethnic girl with jet-black hair and a large round earring. The red-blue tone as well as the neat, straight and diagonal lines also remind viewers of ethnic textile patterns. As for Hoang Dung, “HUG 2 is a personal interpretation of love, embrace and freedom.”