Installation of animal bones found on the edge of the Huế citadel and metal stand.
Dimensions variable.

Description

First shown at the art festival Nổ Cái Bùm (Huế, 2020), the artwork Untitled by Nguyễn Trần Nam lay dutifully in a corner on the floor of the Điềm Phùng Thị Art Foundation. A forgotten poem, neglected. A handful of bones, all chopped up in equal lengths, thrown away by someone unknown. A chance encounter between two poems: Trần Vàng Sao’s poem on the first floor (its text translated into bones by Nam), while Điềm Phùng Thị’s red and black poems on the second, next to her altar room. Trần Vàng Sao (1941–2018), a poet whose heart was heavy with love for his homeland, was exiled by war ideology and his own solitude. Điềm Phùng Thị (1920–2002), a female sculptor who longed to come back to her wartorn country, gifted the city of Huế with almost all of her artistic legacy. Both were intellectuals and artists from Huế. Their poems interweave, each casting its shadow onto the other, their words still echo well into the present. On a metal stand, 62 pieces of bone are lifted from the ground, tightly secured by mechanical and cold hinges. The work has now departed from its original version, no longer spontaneous and poetic.

Description from White Noise Exhibition Brochure, 2023, p. 5.

Statement

I stood still
oh my god
another broken piece in the marble
I hold the marble in my hand blow it and play no more
the ball is not round and not square
sadly chipped in places
I threw the marble across the bamboo grove across the street
the rain is too heavy to hear anything
now I’m sad, not joking
– excerpt from the poem The legend of my marble, Trần Vàng Sao, October 1991.

1. These bones were found by chance at the edge of the Huế citadel, along Spring 68 street.
2. Excerpt from the poem The legend of my marble by poet Trần Vàng Sao was picked by chance.
3. The design of the metal stand is inspired by the legs of an operation table, seen online by chance.
4. Only those clean cuts [of the bones] are not accidental.

Original statement by the artist from White Noise Exhibition Brochure, 2023, p. 4.