Drifting Soul - Souls war has torn from the ground
Drifting Soul, Bui Huu Hung, 2018-2020, lacquer on canvas (Phú Thọ lacquer, clay powder, wood powder, ochre pigment, cinnabar powder, gold powder, silver powder, gold leaf, silver leaf, coarse burlap, muslin on canvas), 211 x 211 cm
Drifting Soul (2018-2020) is a work shaped by memory and nostalgia, two central themes in Bui Huu Hung’s oeuvre.
Rooted in the artist’s own reflections, Drifting Soul unfolds through a series of dissonant recognitions. The work does not isolate a single conflict; instead, it draws together multiple histories, from Vietnam to Ukraine, from Cambodia to the Northern border wars, as human suffering echoes across time and geography. These resonances are not proposed as equivalences. They are moments of identification: the artist seeing, within distant conflicts, the mirrored condition of his own past life.
At its core lies a persistent and unresolved question: who mourns the dead? Millions of lives, soldiers, mothers, fathers, children, are evoked not through enumeration, but through absence. The work gestures toward those who remain unacknowledged: the unnamed, the unburied, the unremembered within official histories. The figures within Drifting Soul dissolve into a collective presence; what the artist has described as a “forest of mourners.” No public grief, just internal landscape. When identity recedes, what remains?
The work also confronts the contradictions embedded within war: asymmetries of power, shifting alliances, and the fragility of loyalty. It recalls histories marked by abandonment and betrayal, extending its reflection across multiple perspectives — including those often excluded from dominant narratives, those in minor keys.
Drifting Soul returns to a quieter, more difficult position: mourning as an isolated act. Neither performed, nor resolved, simply endured. Materially, this condition is embedded within Bui Huu Hung’s lacquer practice. The medium itself, with its layers, opacity, and temporal demands, becomes integral to the work’s “meaning”. What is visible is only the surface; beneath it, traces accumulate, partially concealed, always resisting full disclosure. In this sense, lacquer operates as a structure of memory.
Drifting Soul does not offer resolution. It stays with the weight of what cannot be fully expressed. Past and present, personal memory and collective amnesia. A solitary voice, continuing to ask: who remembers, and who is left to mourn.
The work is part of Vietnam’s first National Pavilion for the 61st Venice Biennale 2026.
Past exhibitions:
- The Door (2020), Vietnam National Consultants Corporation (VNCC), Hanoi, Vietnam
- The Unseen (2024) Corona Resort & Casino Phu Quoc, Vietnam
- Temporal Layers (2025) Office of the National Assembly Delegation and Hanoi People’s Council, Hanoi, Vietnam
Artist Statement (2022)
Vietnamese (original):
TÔI THẤY CẢ MỘT RỪNG NGƯỜI KHÓC THUÊ…?
Ai khóc cho Đất Nước Tôi?
Ai đau đớn hơn Trung đông dưới làn bom của người hàng xóm nhiều đời…? Ai khóc ….
Tôi thấy thân phận người Ucraina trong cuộc chiến của Việt Nam với người Mỹ…?
Tôi thấy sự đau đớn của người Nga trong chiến tranh Việt Nam với Campuchia…?
Ai khóc cho hơn 2 triệu, những người anh, người cha của chúng tôi… khi Việt Nam đánh nhau với NATO do người Mỹ cầm đầu?
Ai khóc cho 1/2 triệu thanh niên .. những người đồng đội của tôi… trên chiến trường Campuchia? Hàng vạn thanh niên Việt ở biên giới Bắc Việt Nam?
Những người lính Việt ở Campuchia … không quân hàm, quân hiệu … ăn bo bo, gạo sấy với muối … Đối phương được lệnh giết hết … kể cả dân, tha hồ đập đầu, mổ bụng moi gan… còn chúng tôi: không được phép động đến từ cái kim sợi chỉ hay tù binh… ??? Hôm qua, hôm nay … Ai đang nhớ tới họ ..?
Ai tráo trở hơn người Mỹ ..? Với những người lính Việt Nam Cộng Hoà ..? Họ không phải con người sao …?
Ai tráo trở hơn Bắc Kinh năm 1979 với người Việt .. Anh em như răng với môi ..?
Ai khóc thì cứ khóc … gào to, chửi bới, mắng nhiếc, hả hê ….
Cô-vit, lạm phát, tăng giá … đâu còn quan trọng ..?
TÔI KHÓC MỘT MÌNH, ĐƠN ĐỘC.
English (translation):
I SEE A WHOLE FOREST OF HIRED MOURNERS…?
Who cries for My Country?
Who suffers more than the Middle East under the bombs of old neighbours …? Who cries…
I see the fate of Ukrainian people in the war of Vietnam with the American people…?
I see the suffering of the Russian people in the war of Vietnam with Cambodia…?
Who cries for more than 2 million, our brothers, our fathers, when Vietnam fought NATO led by the United States?
Who cries for half a million young men… my comrades… on the Cambodian battlefields? Tens of thousands of Vietnamese youth on the Northern border of Vietnam?
Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodia… without rank, without insignia… eating sorghum, dried rice with salt… The opposition was ordered to kill all… even civilians, free to smash heads, cut open stomachs, pull out livers… while we: were not allowed to touch even a needle or a thread, or prisoners… ??? Yesterday, today… Who is remembering them?
Who was more treacherous than the Americans…? Toward the soldiers of the Republic of Vietnam…? Were they not human…?
Who was more treacherous than Beijing in 1979 toward Vietnamese… Brothers like teeth and lips…?
Let those who cry, just cry… shout loudly, insult, rejoice…
Covid, inflation, rising prices… are no longer important…?
I CRY ALONE, IN SOLITUDE.
