» nights

nights forms part of Linh San’s first solo exhibition no longer holding a cloud (2022), which marks her  year-long journey working with the idea of “matter dispersal”, when, for the first time, the artist experimented with clay, a material that requires a different handling of form-creation to her earlier practice with poetry and videos. Through contact of the hand with the weight, heat, strength, looseness and density of the material, in this journey, Linh San explored all the potential expressions of clay, simultaneously questioning both its physical limitations and the psychological limitations of her own body. For Linh San, clay becomes a place for memories to be incarnated and be liberated, a cradle for the years gone by. Done with meticulous and painstaking efforts, and in an almost ritualistic manner, the works in no longer holding a cloud give life to feelings that were once left untouched, and fragments of life that were once left behind.

nights consists of 1,096 pieces of paper made of ceramic – imagined letters from the artist to her father, more than 12 years after his death. With no actual written content, these empty letters encapsulate that which could have been said, but never were and never will be. Instead, thoughts were transformed into ceramic, and words into shapes of paper.

(Edited from text excerpts provided by Á Space)