Duy Phuong
Holding Water
Water haunts my dreams. It has always been source of obsession since I was a little boy. In my obscure childhood recollections, water stirs up unsettling feelings. I found myself in Tri An Lake by chance, the site one of the biggest hydroelectric dams in the South of Vietnam. Here, water is the fate of the people. They are the water and the water is their lives. It is also their dreams, their hopes and hopelessness. As my acquaintance with the place deepened, I was allowed to tag along with the people whose lives revolve around the rising and ebbing of the tides. Somehow my life became interwoven into their daily life and interior world, amidst a sublime and spellbinding background. Humans, nature and memories appear and vanish, like the glimmering reflections in the river of life. The lake, with both its dreamlike characteristics and the physicality of its landscapes, merges with the people and their existence, all becoming an oneiric part of my work. I immersed myself in the waters, carried away by its currents, the way a stranger immerses himself in the life of the local people, carried away by the intimacy and confidence they shared with me. Water is the spirit that you can only understand by being immersed in its essence.
