KVT – A questionable tree

Nguyen Phuong Linh’s recent exhibition at Nha San Duc was a successful experiment into surrealism. Two living trees were grafted together half way up their trunks so that each end had branches and leaves. The tree extended through the floor of the stilt house with its branches stretching above and below the wooden planks but as though suspended in space.

Cunningly lit, it was a lovely visual illusion.

Many modern viewers, used to media images that distort and play with natural order and form may not have questioned the surrealness of the exhibition or the freak of nature that the tree represented. A lot, who are dedicated sci-fi fans, may have seen it as a part of a fantasy wonderland. Others would have viewed the tree as a manipulation of nature by man in order to produce a new species for any variety of ethical or unethical purposes. Others may have found the illusion unsettling in a world that they assume is being damaged by man made environmental practices. Some who are opposed to the idea of environmental art, the art practices that deliberately interfere with or change natural landscapes by destroying natural organisms and landforms, would have been annoyed.

Perhaps its intent was to challenge all of these responses.

It presented us with a Siamese Twin scenario. On one intellectual level we are fascinated with the conjoining and love the freak show aspect of it all but on another we want to have the parts separated and everything made nice and normal again.

As the exhibit died and decayed- as it had to, cut off from its roots- its presence could have been used as a metaphor about a lot of environmental or societal issues where humans have enforced a graft of their own intent onto a host without asking consent or researching consequence.

I’d love to see the concept enlarged to the extent that a forest of such trees was created either inside or outside a gallery space.