Across the forest, 2014 – present. 4 channels installation, video color, sound. Photo courtesy of Truong Cong Tung.
There’s a sense of materiality that seeps through and connects your media. This is often expressed through symbols of nature such as earth, insects, water, or plants, the co-existence of which weaves an ecosystem in the exhibition space. Can you share your thoughts on constructing this half-real and half-fiction, half-natural and half-artificial world? In particular, I’m referring to your ongoing body of work The state of absence – voices from outside (2020– ), where you install nets of wooden
beads, calabash gourds, soil, and an intricate system of water transmission in the exhibition space.
I like to think of my practice as working in a garden where many histories occur simultaneously. My family has deep agricultural roots and I grew up surrounded by nature in the Central Highlands. As a result, I see my artworks as seeds that I sow in the garden. Depending on the conditions, they will continue to germinate, sprout, and transform. In the body of work you mention, the motif of the calabash gourd is linked to mythologies of the Great Flood that occurred across ethnicities in Highland Southeast Asia—particularly Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. To avoid drowning, people sought refuge inside a giant calabash. After the water receded, the survivors emerged from the calabash and into a new world. I like these doomsday stories in which water acts as an instrument for catharsis. That is why water is an important factor in the work, combined with other natural elements to provide a space where viewers can speculate on larger questions. I also began this series in 2020 during the pandemic, a time of chaos that also brought with it opportunities for change. The mythological flood not only takes the physical form of a sweeping virus, but also a mental deluge that reveals inner problems that we now have to accept and deal with.
Read the full conversation on Art Asia Pacific, Issue 134, JUL/AUG 2023
