Excerpt: Like skin, like earth
In response to Hà My Nguyễn’s solo exhibition at Galerie Bao
Over the years, we have republished parts of long-form writing, from catalogue essays to book chapters. This practice is now formalised as part of our Excerpt series. If you would like to work with us to republish a text, please email us at info@from-the-margins.org.
Here is an excerpt from the exhibition text written by Trương Minh Quý for Hà My Nguyễn’s solo exhibition Flesh and Leaf, Sap and Seed (2026) at Galerie Bao, Paris.
Hà My Nguyễn, Son Verger / Her Orchard, 2026, ceramic, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of Galerie Bao.
At first glance, Hà My (Nguyễn)’s ceramic sculptures invite our focus to what tears through the fragile ceramic skin, bursting outward toward us: thorns, vines, fruits, seeds or tumors. As we linger, our gaze gradually follows them down to their roots, weaving through the cuts and delving deep beneath the ceramic surface. This shift in perspective amusingly implies both a sense of physical intimacy and a clinical observation. What is inside, and beneath, that skin? It is perhaps a murky space, at times dense, at other times shimmering with the artist’s nostalgia. It is perhaps a reservoir of fertility and expectation fraught with care and anxiety; or a sac of fluid from festering wounds that induce shivering, burning fevers.
It is also time, accumulated over countless days, encasing that fluid space of pains and memories. And, what occurs within unfolds as what manifests on the outside: the throbbing, the rising and falling, the wrinkling of the skin signify the struggle to adapt, the resistance against internal pain, and the plastic flexibility of this fragile surface. Naturally, everything could just remain shrouded, concealed within and beneath; and life goes on, indifferent yet normal, as it always has. One who carries a tumor or a sac of liquid, carries it through every step, every place, every romance and separation. The growing tumor and daily life exist as two separate entities, avoiding one another. Yet, the weight of time and the aging of flesh and memory make it
increasingly intractable to ignore the trauma stored within the body. Pain has finally become daily life. Guided by an intuition of time and physical sensitivity, Hà My cuts into the skin, opens it, allowing what is inside to erupt, releasing the pent-up longings. Hà My opens, not from the outside, but from within and beneath the skin: as if she were diving in the dark, slicing the water’s surface from below.
Detail of Hà My Nguyễn, Pavé N°1 from the Under My Skin series, 2026, ceramic. Image courtesy of Galerie Bao.
Hà My Nguyễn, Blossom no.10, 2025, ceramic, 40 x 25 x 20 cm. Image courtesy of Galerie Bao.
In this movement from the inside out, from the depths to the surface, that which was once hidden undergoes a metamorphosis into familiar things of the artist’s memory. The thorns seem like things that wound the flesh; yet they belong to the familiar bồ kết : the thorns are brewed into a tea to soothe inflammation and dissipate festering swellings, while the seeds are used as a traditional wash to darken the hair…
Installation view at Galerie Bao of Hà My Nguyễn, Chair et Feuille, Sève et Graine, 2026. Photo by Tiphaine Babonneau. Image courtesy of Galerie Bao.
…In those distant days in a small frontier town, where summer days were torched not just by the red sun but also the reckless Lao wind sweeping through barren hills, and the rest of the year was moulded by falling rains that whispered of a lost past, like mumblings of a mad poet born in the same region: “The rain drips drops on my head / I ask the Heavens to partake in my grief / In the wild days of roaming childhood / Falling rain was a joy that made me whole / Now where that old happiness has fled / What remains is a life colored half-shred / Reveries fall in seeds, strand by strand.”¹ There, sheltering from rain and wind, the women of a family would boil bồ kết seeds to extract an ink-black liquid for their hair. The scent and color of that dark water seeped, forever, into every sliver of hair.
Installation view of Hà My Nguyễn, Under My Skin series, 2026, ceramic. Image courtesy of Galerie Bao, Paris.
A sense of a memory-scape poignantly weaves through Hà My’s work. If we try to step back to grasp in a distance the abstraction of the pieces, what appears before us are the undulating forms as if of topographical maps of one or many landscapes. The openings of the earth’s surface are to see through the distance, so that here might see there. But what is seen is hardly everything, for the space beneath is always an accumulation of de-stilling time. Like pains, like memories. Like skin, like earth.
This article is presented in partnership with Galerie Bao.
Hà My Nguyễn: Flesh and Leaf, Sap and Seed is on view from 12 March to 25 April 2026, at Galerie Bao, Paris. More information here.
Notes:
From the poem Trời Mưa trên Đầu (The Rain on My Head) by Bùi Giáng (1926-1998).
