リン・サン／ベトナム
リン・サン（1998年生まれ）はベトナムで複数の領域を横断するアーティストとして活動しています。彼女は国立ハノイ教育大学で文学を学び、詩作、映像、製陶などを幅広く手がけ、日常の生活から詩的で、飾り気なく、静かに思考をうながすような時間を描き出します。リンの文学的作品は散文詩の形式を取ることが多く、想像力を介して物語と感情の地平を思考や内面がほとばしるようにして彼女独自の考えが映し出されます。
彼女の詩は、「マージンズ」、「詩の翻訳センター」などが発行する著作集に掲載されています。また、短編映像作品はドイツ文化センター（ハノイ）、タイグエン大学、インドネシア国立博物館などで上映されています。
2022年にリン・サンは「もう雲を抱かない」という題名の個展をハノイの Á Spaceで開催し、そこでは陶磁器の可能性を探るため、伝統的な形の制約を超えて素材との対話を試みました。彼女の製陶実践は、粘土が持つ可能性、他の素材との融合、工芸とモノの風景を変容させるための探求です。彼女は2023年にクラウス王配財団による新人芸術賞を受賞しています。
Linh San(b. 1998) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Viet Nam. Linh holds a bachelor’s degree in Literature from the Hanoi National University of Education and her practice spans poetry, moving images, and ceramics. In her work, she depicts poetic, plain, and contemplative moments from daily life.
Linh’s literary works often take the form of prose poetry, very much a reflection of her way of thinking—a stream of thoughts and mental images gushing through terrains of narratives and emotions connected via imaginative links. Linh’s poems have appeared in The Margins, Poetry Translation Centre, and various anthologies. Her short films have been screened at Hanoi Goethe-Institut, Thai Nguyen University, and the National Museum of Indonesia, among other places. In 2022, Linh San presented her first solo exhibition, titled “no longer holding a cloud”, at Á Space, Hanoi. She explores ceramics as a dialogue between the artist and the material, pushing its boundaries beyond traditional forms. Her ceramics practice examines the potential of clay, its fusion with other materials and its relationship with the transforming landscapes of craft and matter. She received Prince Claus Seed Awards in 2023 as an emerging artist.
a note of clay, 2024, raw porcelain clay, site-specific installation, photo by Jamie Maxtone-Graham
In a note of clay, my commitment to materiality focuses on unearthing the ‘characteristics’ of clay in its raw form as I look into the ‘bone’ of a shape before it goes through the firing stage to become ceramic. This line of thought derives from an old saying that traditional Vietnamese ceramicists have lived by for generations: “Nhất xương, nhì da, thứ ba dạc lò” (“Bone first, skin second, third kiln built”). The saying refers to ‘bone’ as the quality of the clay and its shaping method, ‘skin’ as the colour of the glaze and decorative elements, and ‘kiln built’ as the firing techniques. My experiment in a note of clay extends beyond just materiality to how such material can form a dialogue with the artist’s studio within an unfinished, raw house in the suburbs of Hanoi. On the floor, ‘filaments’ of clay, each being neatly placed next to/onto one another — a result of time-honoured, careful repetition — reveal a pure white colour after drying up. As they dry, these clay filaments cling to the floor, part wobbly, part stable, alluding to gravity and structure in relation with space and time.
no longer holding a cloud, 2022, installation view, solo show at Á Space Hà Nội, photo by Dan Nguyen
no longer holding a cloud is the first stop that marks the more than year-long journey of Linh San working with the idea of ‘matter dispersal’, when for the first time, she experimented with clay, a material that requires a different handling of form-creation to her earlier practice with poetry and videos. This mixture of soil, water and chemicals is not a material to simply create shapes; it also envelopes and cradles the years gone by, a place for memories to be incarnated and be liberated. Done with meticulous and painstaking efforts, in almost a ritualistic manner, the series of works in ‘no longer holding a cloud’ materializes the shapes of the feelings left inarticulate, a reflection on the absence, the remnants left behind of a fragment of life, and the path to becoming oneself through each fold and mold.
While the soil slumbers, 2024, site specific installation at A (4)
When I first began working with ceramics, I thought the two deciding elements of the material–clay and kiln–could not be separated from my body of work. My approach to the material has changed after years, which resulted in the expansion of my ceramic-making process. The word “and” in “clay and kiln” suggests that firing is a required step for clay to transform into ceramic. I am now thinking about materials according to a different ph(r)ase: raw clay and post-fired things. That implies when raw clay becomes the material element that captures my attention, firing for me now is just a method of making, an option. I learned from craftsmen that to work with ceramics, I have to ‘be in touch with the kiln’. Leaving my studio in Hanoi, travelling on field trips around Southern Vietnam where there are or were pottery villages, I questioned and challenged my own approaches to ceramics and materials. In so doing, I tried to be able to work anywhere, not necessarily tied to a studio space or a kiln. While the soil slumbers is formed through trips, a complex of new and old memories in different lands, a subtle warmth that lingers after miles.