us/self

11 Sep – 01 Oct 2025
Hanoi Studio Gallery
23-25 Mạc Đĩnh Chi, Trúc Bạch, Ba Đình, Hà Nội

From the organizer:

Human (Self), I (You), (You) I
Child (Mother). Mother (Child).
The self (the collective), the “I” (the “we”).
Long solitary journeys (the hesitant, tiny steps we take together).
Fragments and pieces – leaning, intertwining – forming a vast canvas named life.

In her art, Dung always chooses the quiet path of returning to herself. There, one finds a world free of loud declarations – a rhythm that breathes slow and steady, like the quiet inhale and exhale of life itself.

In the solitude of her small room, she neither “withdraws” from the world nor “dissolves” into it; instead, she waits, patiently observing – a silent witness to the subtle, fragile shifts of living.

For Dung, art does not stand outside life to “interpret” or “illustrate” it; it seeps through, dissolving into every detail of the everyday. Personal stories become doorways, revealing a larger truth: that art and life have never been separate. They walk side by side, nourishing and questioning one another – in each fragment of memory, each quiet touch of feeling, each moment of being a mother, a child, a human.

Every work is a slice, a small but complete fragment of her own tentative searching, her quiet awkwardness – and also a tender space where gentleness, love, and unspoken silences take form.

This exhibition, then, is not merely a space to display artworks, but a human encounter: between “I” and “you,” between “child” and “mother,” between each individual and a larger collective. Strokes of color, layers of memory, blurred edges and empty spaces – all interlacing, supporting, and holding one another – come together to build a larger canvas: the canvas of each of us within this shared life.

Here, the personal becomes the fabric of the collective. And the collective, in turn, becomes the anchor that allows the personal to lean and grow.

Perhaps what lingers after all is not just shapes and colors on canvas, but a sense of presence – the presence of an artist with quiet, unguarded tremors; of a mother with silent, steadfast love; of a human being searching for the meaning of “I” within “you,” and “you” within “I.”

As Dung once wrote in her own statement:
“I let art seep into the veins of my life — where I trace the values I believe in, where I reflect upon relationships, where I dare to explore uncharted shadows.”

Maybe that is what this exhibition leaves with the viewer – a quiet reminder that, in our shared humanity, we exist in every breath, every connection, every step taken together, every ordinary act of love we live alongside one another.

Dung tells the story of herself – and, through her, we find glimpses of our own.