Hung the Moon Behind the Curtain

2025
Aluminium, mesh fabric, silicone, foam
Installation view Savvy Contemporary, 2025

Hung the Moon Behind the Curtain‬‭ is a series of textile-based sculptures exploring the‬ entangled aesthetics of mass-produced Vietnamese garments and the vertical suburban‬ architectures shaped by remittance economies. Constructed from polished aluminum, mesh fabric,‬ silicone, and foam, the works isolate and abstract patterns drawn from sun-protective garments and‬ pajamas, ubiquitous clothing forms in Vietnam’s domestic and public life.‬

These textile motifs—florals, polka dots, camouflage, and checks—resonate with what theorists Arjun Appadurai describes as emergent visual languages shaped‬ by global circulation, supply chains, and shifting cultural economies. Often dismissed as generic,‬‭ these patterns embody a‬‭ vernacular globalism‬‭ : endlessly reproduced across borders, yet marked by‬ class, gender, and postcolonial legacies. In Vietnam, they operate as everyday uniforms. These‬ garments are once hyper-visible and socially invisible signaling care, labor, protection, and the‬ intimacy of daily life.‬

‭The sculptures are framed in narrow aluminum structures that echo the proportions and facades of‬‭ Vietnam’s “tube houses”—multi-story, compressed dwellings commonly built with remittance funds.‬ Their stacked verticality, tiled surfaces, and ornamental façades reflect not only economic ambition‬ but also the architectural in-betweenness of transnational life: a hybrid aesthetic of belonging as well‬ as partial return.‬

‭The digital printed mesh fabric is stretched tightly or hangs loosely within these rigid and narrow‬ frames, sometimes sagging beyond the edges. These gestures evoke both the soft opacity of‬ curtains and the constraint spaces of the “tube” architecture, signaling the tension between‬ containment and leak, between structural rigidity and the bodily memory embedded in cloth. The‬ works recall windows as a threshold between inside and outside, between the visible and the‬
concealed.‬

Photos: Marvin Systermans

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