Tru’o’ng Công Tùng’s training in lacquer painting is combined with interests in science, ecology and cosmology in Khu Vu’ò’n La.c Hu’ò’ng (A disoriented garden) 2024, which melds elements of nature and culture with symbols from the Central Highlands of Viê.t Nam. The artist is particularly influenced by his upbringing in Đăk Lăk in the Central Highlands and his ongoing relationship with the indigenous Jrai people of that region, whose customary beliefs are grounded in nature and place. Tru’o’ng Công Tùng works with a range of media, including installation, sound and found objects, to reflect on, in his words, ‘the cultural and geopolitical shifts of modernisation, as embodied in the morphing ecology, beliefs or mythology of a land’.

Khu Vu’ò’n La.c Hu’ò’ng (A disoriented garden) includes gourds – one of the oldest cultivated crops of South-East Asia, traditionally used to carry water or to form the body of musical instruments. The suspended lacquer spheres reference archival photographs of landscapes impacted by human and natural disasters, from forest fires to war. Each disparate element in this garden is connected through a shared process of transformation, from the lacquer which was once sap to the gridded frames used for silkworm cultivation. For Tru’o’ng Công Tùng, creation is a cyclical and collaborative process in which time, temperature, erosion and spirituality play equal parts.