Victoria Pham: roots run wild on threads of memory

Comprising a large-scale silk painting, hand-embroidered 18th century erotic and feminist poetry by Hồ Xuân Hương, and assemblages of futuristic-archeological objects, the exhibition features the eponymous sound-projection-garden installation in the gallery's lower level.

The artworks' diversity of forms belies their underlying commonality: what they are made of is not straightforward; and the archive from which these works derive meaning is unstable, contested - and very much alive.

In her first solo exhibition in Europe, Victoria's decidedly polyvalent practice as an artist, an evolutionary biologist and archaeologist, a composer, a writer, and a materials designer coalesce to present a plural self. The exhibit contains not only the artist's singular subjectivity, but also traces of the bodies and labor and remembrances of the women in her family; a communion and a negotiation with nature in the production process; and an imperfect reclamation of lost language, silence, and meaning in the aftermath of coloniality. As Victoria acknowledges, the works in the show "contemplate how the connection between decomposition and regeneration can be an act of resilience."