Art Installation
A state of absence ... Words out there

A collaborative installation by plants, insects, earth, water, ash, air... and Trương Công Tùng.

17.12.2021 - 30.01.2022, 12 AM - 7 PM, Wednesday to Sunday
12:00 PM Manzi Exhibition Space (Hanoi)

“We are here, right in the presence of things being seen, being heard, being known, and right in your imagination...”

‘A state of absence... Words out there’ can be interpreted as transfiguration of a land, a river, a forest, as a change in the scenery, a portrait, and as a metamorphosis of an insect, an animal, or a community. The concept of ‘absence’ propounded here concatenates various states of ‘non-appearance’ of the natural world with its ‘becoming non-present’ state in the human mindset and social behaviours of everyday life.

This exhibition is a collaboration between living beings, natural substances like: plants, insects, earth, water, the souls… and the elements commonly labelled man-made such as: engines, motors, the camera, electric lights... Throughout this whole process, the human involvement is merely an intermediary role, serving as a link or a conveyor that assists the probabilities of operation for both natural and artificial elements.

In this ‘A state of absence... Words out there’, the artist, once again goes through that passage, just like many times before - the passage between life and death, between waking and dreaming, between sanity and madness, reality and illusion, between insect and human, between the earth and skin & flesh, between forest canopies and bare hills, between the lost lands and perished states, between nameless places and unknown destinations,...

This event is part of Manzi’s art programme supported by the Goethe Institut.