Hiền Hoàng: Garden of Entanglement

The collection at Foam combines works from the artist’s most recent projects, which use a broad range of techniques to dissect culture. Many of her series include the Aquilaria tree as a key feature, a plant that is native to southeast Asia with a diminishing abundance, and others draw upon old photos to tell stories of her family’s heritage and stereotypes of Asian cultures. 

In her 2023 project, Scent from Heaven, Hoàng ran an experiment measuring the electrical changes in her brain while smelling an Aquilaria tree, and similarly an Aquilaria tree is placed in a CT scanner. These images are not a satirical comment on the futility of using experimentation to study personal connection, but rather as a very real proposition towards the scientific community to study quantifiable connections between human and heritage. 

Alternatively, the 2021 collection, Made in Rice, delves into cultural perceptions inspired by racist experiences Hoàng faced living in Germany as a Vietnamese person. The collection highlights food as a suppressing idea placed on Asian cultures, with models bearing the weight of rice bags attached to their bodies in dehumanising forms. 

The often inaccurate stereotypes regarding Asian migrant families are further explored through Hoàng’s scans of pages from her own photograph albums. These scans offer a snapshot of the realities of life for her family, focusing on her aunt’s migration to Germany. More than soy sauce and rice, her family photo refutes the idea that all immigrants fit exactly into the mould of their culture created by society.

Taken as a whole, the exhibition poses new questions about the existence of culture and connection in today’s world, a delicate balance between the hard evidence possible through scientific discovery and the stereotypes that ensue from overgeneralisation.