Truong Cong Tung
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Shadows in the Garden #2 no. 4
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As part of a larger project titled Another Place Across The River, the artwork Portrait of a deforming symbol. Lost and Found is an effort to collect Saigonese urban myths. Here, Tung’s “material myths” are collected primarily in District 2 (now part of Thu Duc City), Saigon, where reforms to urban space are most apparent, swamps sitting next to urbanising compounds sitting next to swamps, all waiting for the future megalopolis. These myths reside in billboards with fading images, torn slogans, and in the plethora of scrap metal scattered and unearthed by metal detectors: door bolts, rivets, scale weights, and work tools that once contributed to the daily life of a community have become waste to be recycled. These anonymous objects create an animate world in a landscape without human beings – a world that exists just across the metropolis full of sound, movement, and people on the other side of the Saigon River.
(Edited from text excerpts provided by the artist)