Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần
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©2026 aqat
The Obligation Toward the Difficult Whole (2026)
Joss-paper bóng rỗi tower dipped in clay, glaze, metal, and wheels
100 x 60 x 50 cm
The sculpture starts with the joss-paper towers used in Southern Vietnamese bóng rỗi rituals, in which deities and ancestors are invoked from the past into the present, while offerings and prayers are made in anticipation of a future yet to come. Through repeated immersion in wet clay, each tower gradually takes on a form shaped as much by gravity, fluidity, and chance as by human hands. During firing, the paper burns away, leaving behind a ceramic body that retains the traces of its disappearance. What remains is an attempt to arrest, within a physical form, a ritual moment in which different temporalities briefly converge.