Where Shadows Breathe
09 AM – 08 PM, Tues – Sun, 04 Oct – 15 Nov 2026
Mơ Art Space
Floor B3, 136 Hàng Trống, Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội
From the organizer:
This October, Mo Art Space proudly presents “Where Shadows Breathe” — the debut solo exhibition by young artist Iris Sa (Phuong Nguyen), curated by Do Tuong Linh.
The practice of Iris Sa (Phuong Nguyen, b. 1998) is grounded in an intersection of magical realism, dreams, and forms of cosmological imagination. Across her paintings and ceramic works, the artist constructs a world in which women, animals, plants, and hybrid beings exist beyond the stable laws of reality. This space is not merely an imagined setting, but a means through which the artist investigates questions of being, memory, female identity, and the relationships between human beings and the natural world.
At this point, Iris Sa’s practice can be placed in dialogue with certain forms of contemporary literature concerned with the conditions of female existence. In Belgian writer Jacqueline Harpman’s 1995 novel “I Who Have Never Known Men”, thirty-nine women and a young girl are imprisoned underground, severed from the history they once knew and from the social structures that had previously defined their existence. When they eventually emerge from their confinement, they encounter a vast and almost empty world. There is no explanation for what has happened, no clear origin, and no predetermined meaning waiting to be discovered. For the young girl, who has never known the world before her imprisonment, this expanse is both terrifying and charged with an almost instinctive curiosity. Speaking, thinking, remembering, and eventually writing become ways of affirming one’s existence within a world that offers no answers.
Another literary work, Russian-Azerbaijani writer Egana Djabbarova’s “My Dreadful Body”, offers a particularly compelling point of reference. Djabbarova constructs her narrative through the female body itself: eyebrows, eyes, hair, tongue, hands, throat, abdomen. Each part becomes a site upon which cultural expectations, family history, language, violence, and identity are inscribed. The body in her work is not merely a biological entity; it becomes a territory upon which others have already written.
These two literary works suggest an important way of approaching Iris Sa’s practice: the question of womanhood lies not only in how women’s bodies are perceived, but also in their capacity to construct worlds from their own positions. If Harpman creates a world in which women must reconstruct the meaning of existence from a historical void, and Djabbarova examines the body as a territory already inscribed by society, Iris Sa performs a corresponding gesture through images: she constructs a new world around these bodies.
– Excerpts from the exhibition text by curator Do Tuong Linh.
* The exhibition is not suitable for children under 12. Children over 12 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Iris Sa (Phuong Nguyen, b.1998) is an artist based in Hanoi, Vietnam. Iris Sa explores the intersection of magical realism and the world of dreams. Her works share a core interest in the subconscious, dreaming, and the creation of new worlds through an ongoing inquiry into our sleeping unconsciousness. While dreams may not resolve the fundamental questions of life, we nevertheless find ourselves questioning whether a thread truly connects the dream to the waking reality. In this unconscious state, notions of space and time often blur, yet it is precisely when boundless creativity emerges.
Đỗ Tường Linh is a curator, researcher, and art writer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Art Theory Criticism from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts, and a Master of Arts in Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa from SOAS University of London, UK, supported by the prestigious Alphawood Scholarship. Linh graduated from the Curatorial Studies program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (Class of 2025), and previously served as a curatorial team member for the 12th Berlin Biennale. She currently serves as Art Director in New York and London (Nguyen Wahed Gallery) as well as in Hanoi (Vincom Center for Contemporary Art – VCCA).
Since 2005, Tuong Linh has contributed to various exhibitions and art projects across Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and Europe. She is also a research fellow of Site and Space in Southeast Asia—a project organized by the Power Institute, University of Sydney, Australia, with funding from the Getty Foundation, USA. In addition, her participation in prominent international art and cultural programs includes: the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship 2023; the Ljubljana Graphic Art Biennial 2019, Slovenia; the Association of Art Museum Directors Conference, New York, USA; Mekong Cultural Hub 2018–2019, Taiwan; the CIMAM International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art Conference 2018, Oslo, Norway; the Asia Culture Center (Gwangju, South Korea) 2018; Tate Intensive 2018, Tate Modern, UK; and French Encounter at Art Basel Hong Kong 2018, among others. Notable exhibitions curated by Tuong Linh include: Womb of Fire (co-organized by Vin Gallery, Gallery Medium & Mo Art Space, Vietnam, 2025); Foliage 5 (VCCA, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2025); Means of Production (Shisanwu, NYC, USA, 2024); Kin to these tremors (CCS Bard Galleries, New York, USA, 2023); Citizen Earth (Hanoi, Vietnam, 2020); Dreaming about Landscape (Mo Art Space, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2020); Foliage 3 (VCCA, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2019); Geo-Resilience of the All-world at La Colonie (Paris, France, 2018); No War, No Vietnam at Galerie Nord (Berlin, Germany, 2018); and SEAcurrents (London, UK, 2017).
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