Trail Dust

Canal Projects is pleased to present Trail Dust. This exhibition features recent work by the Vietnamese artist Trương Công Tùng (Đắk Lắk province, b. 1986), exploring the artist’s ongoing interest in the histories, rituals, and mythologies of land stewardship as a living practice. In a manner much like a gardener works a parcel of land, Trương Công Tùng tends to his work over time, allowing it to evolve and change in response to the specifications of each site’s iteration. Often combining natural materials with found objects of an inorganic, disruptive, or incongruent nature, the work reflects on the interruption of Indigenous practices by the forces of modernity, colonialism, and conflict. Rather than a lament for what has passed, Tùng’s poetic sensibility finds an inspiring resilience characterized by a reimagining of the land as a site of communion between the physical and spiritual worlds. At Canal Projects, Trương Công Tùng is reimagining a living garden deployed through a heavy beaded curtain that is draped the length of the gallery space. The curtain is woven with a combination of beads that originate from a number of forest trees including those that were introduced to Vietnam during the process of industrialization such as coffee, avocado, rubber, and cashew trees. Beyond the curtain are a series of low platforms filled with dirt and seed, each small plot of land holds an installation of heavily lacquered gourds. The gourds are then connected through a web of clear plastic tubing, bubbling with water that is pumped between them. These materials, coffee, cashew, and lacquer, once highly-valued materials, are all extracted from the artist’s homeland of Vietnam. Also accompanying the exhibition is the video, The Lost Landscape #1 (2021). In the video, one is taken through the Natural History Museum in Paris encountering close-up shots of the glass eyes of taxidermied animals. According to Vietnamese folklore, it is believed that the last things seen by an animal before its death are permanently captured in their eyes. Trương’s works on view trace the journey of that loss and metaphorically suggest a new path to new ends. Trương Công Tùng (b. 1986, Đắk Lắk province; lives in Ho Chi Minh City) has exhibited extensively in Vietnam and abroad, both as a solo artist and as part of Art Labor. Recent exhibitions include the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022) and others at Manzi Art Space, Hanoi (2021); San Art, Ho Chi Minh City (2018); Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City (2018); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018); Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2018); Kadist, San Francisco (2016); Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi (2016); as well as the Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2016). He is also the recipient of the inaugural Han Nefkens Foundation—Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant 2023, in collaboration with Sàn Art, Vietnam; Sa Sa Art Projects, Cambodia; Jim Thompson Art Center, Thailand; Museion, Italy; Busan Museum of Art, South Korea, and Prameya Art Foundation, India.

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