Connecting people through art 

Deeply immersed in materiality and spirituality, Trương Công Tùng's solo exhibition, titled “The disoriented garden… A breath of dream,” at the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkoka offers a poetic yet haunting perspective on various complicated issues in the Central Highlands, Vietnam.

The title of the exhibition is taken from the title of the video artwork result of Tung winning the Han Nefkens Foundation–Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant 2023, in collaboration with Sa Sa Art Projects (Cambodia), Jim Thompson Art Center (Thailand), Museion (Italy), Busan Museum of Art (South Korea) and Prameya Art Foundation (India).

From an installation made of natural and artificial elements that he foraged to the video artwork that interlaces the visuals and sounds from his hometown in Gia Lai Province, Trương employed a diverse spectrum of media to gesture toward unspoken stories of ecological disruption and social politics. Stepping into Trương’s exhibition is also akin to taking a leisure stroll through a mythical secret garden, one that is immersed in a trancelike ambience in which the audience can temporarily unfocus their consciousness and allow their senses to take over. Watch the ghost lights play chase across the screen, listen to the faint reverberations of water, breathe in the smell of soil and seeds: the garden awaits those who wish to see differently.

About the artist
Born in 1986, Truong Cong Tung grew up in Dak Lak among various ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. He graduated from the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2010, majoring in lacquer painting. With research interests in science, cosmology, philosophy and the environment, Truong Cong Tung works with a range of media, including video, installation, painting and found objects, which reflect personal contemplations on the cultural and geopolitical shifts of modernization, as embodied in the morphing ecology, belief or mythology of a land. He is also a member of Art Labor (founded in 2012), a collective working between visual art and social/life sciences to produce alternative non-formal knowledge via artistic and cultural activities in various public contexts and locales.
truongcongtung.com

About the curator

Hung Duong or Duong Manh Hung is an independent translator, writer, and curator. His practice weaves textual intricacy with visual subtlety to deliver responses and raise questions about diverse art-related topics. Hùng’s interest in the dynamics between visual arts and translation is informed by his close observation of global and Southeast Asian socio-political and ecological histories. Hung has contributed exhibition reviews, interviews, and essays on Vietnam and Southeast Asia for multiple contemporary art platforms, including artforum, ArtAsiaPacific, and Art & Market (Singapore).