What Lies Ahead
Two portraits of children, set side by side.
One is a Châu Ro child in Tà Lài, a forest district of Đồng Nai. The eyes seem to ask whether a culture dissolving into the towns around it will still be theirs, and what life lies ahead of them.
The other is the artist's daughter, imagining herself grown, in uniform, posing under a calm sky. The work asks who is allowed to dream, whether a dream can be taken away, and whether it can be shared.
The artist formulates the glazes. Potters at kilns in Biên Hòa prepare the clay and roll it into thin, hand-sized slabs; once dry, the slabs are brushed with the artist's glazes by hired artisans and fired, following the techniques of the local kiln tradition. The artist then breaks the fired tiles, or cuts them with nippers, into smaller pieces and sets them into the work, among a small number of older collected fragments, which grow scarcer each year.