'Letters from the Hometown Garden'
Created on commission for Montblanc for the opening of their new boutique at Saigon Centre, HCM
This work grows from my independent artistic research into Vietnamese language, landscape, and visual memory. The concept is part of an ongoing artistic inquiry that I will continue to develop through my future practice.
100 × 70 cm
Acrylic and gold leaf on Điệp paper, burned, mounted, and collaged on canvas.
2026
In a rapidly globalising Vietnam, where people, languages and cultures increasingly move across geographical and emotional borders, the smallest marks of a mother tongue can become intimate traces of belonging.
Letters from the Hometown Garden reflects on the tenderness of the Vietnamese language through its distinctive letters and diacritics: ơ, â, ư, ê, ở, í, ….. and through simple words that carry the warmth of home: ơi (a tender call), nhớ (to miss), yêu thương (to love, to hold dear), mẹ ơi (oh, mother), ở nơi nao (wherever you may be), ước ao (to long for), trông đợi (to wait and hope), …. Here, language is not simply something we speak or write, but something we carry with us: a quiet thread connecting us to a place, a family and a memory of home.
The work focuses on the particular forms of modern Vietnamese Quốc Ngữ: a Latin-based writing system shaped by Vietnam’s encounter with the wider world, yet transformed into a language unmistakably its own. The diacritics become more than marks of pronunciation, but quiet markers of identity, carrying a sense of belonging across distance.
The composition draws from the Vietnamese garden tradition expressed in “trước cau, sau chuối” (areca palms in front and banana trees behind). The vertical areca palm and broad banana leaves suggest the complementary energies of yang and yin, reflected in the relationship between the central painted forms and the quieter printed layers beneath them. Together, these elements weave language into the landscape, allowing it to grow beyond the boundaries of place.
*The title plays on the word “letters”: letters as language, and letters as messages sent home or from home. Similarly, the Vietnamese title plays on three layers of meaning in the Vietnamese phrase “thư từ”: letters, letters coming somewhere, and “từ” as words that form language.
Photo credit: DAFC & Montblanc, Bao Huynh