» A Ă Â…

A Ă Â… is a collection of the 30 alphabetical letters and six tonal marks in the Vietnamese script, carefully extracted by Nguyen Huy An from propaganda slogans once painted on the walls of rural villages across North Vietnam. By isolating these characters, the artist dismantles the very structure of slogans that once dominated public space, returning each letter to its primordial state – before it was mobilized to construct collective political messages.

The letters and tonal marks are housed in thirty wooden boxes like archaeological specimens, simultaneously preserved and severed from their original context. Time has left its mark on their surfaces: peeling paint, dust, and cracks evoke the walls and the era where they once resounded. Suspended now in silence, they remain as bare, fragmented signs.

With A Ă Â…, Nguyen Huy An questions not only language and power but also collective memory – how political messages that once “shaped” the social landscape have been reduced to mere visual remnants. The work becomes a stream of recollection – at once nostalgic and detached – meditating on history and on the ways sound and its meaning have settled into the flow of Vietnam’s political life.