Description

In this human-less environment, everything - from the grandioseness of the space and the sporadic arrangement of the work, to the detached quality of the imagery - points to the future after a catastrophe. Here, only fragile traces of human existence are found. This uncanny premonition of impending disaster is intensified by the duality of the employed paradoxes: stillness and movement, proximity and distance, silence and noise. Are we witnessing the end of Nature, or her new beginning? Have her intruders been swept out, and her place reclaimed? The decadence of industrialisation and modernisation, the arrogant privileging of human desire and greed, the violent decay of nature, the irreversible decline of a system as it moves towards the ideal - these are the vectors that transverse In One’s Breath - Nothing Stands Still. This body of work is the result of years of investigating and documenting the significant loss of biodiversity caused by overexploitation of natural resources, and its devastating consequences in the my hometown Hà Nam. The work, however, speaks on a much large scale, and is not merely a reflection or criticism of the situation, but rather a lyrical expression of a global phenomenon, a (dys)utopia casting an ominous shadow, hovering between dreams and nightmares, resurrection and extinction, past and future. It is at this very crossroad that we realize, humanity - for all its contemplating, scrutinising, reflecting and wondering – is once again trapped in the obliteration of their own creation.

Text by Curator Bill Nguyen