Photo: produced by Han Nefkens Foundation, in collaboration with Kochi Biennale & Tate St Ives
Dream of March and August (2018 – ongoing) is a series of soft and ethereal watercolours on natural silk by Ho Chi Minh City -based artist Thao Nguyên Phan. From a traditional harvesting perspective — before the global food trade was all the rage — the months of March and August were by far the direst for Vietnamese people: the provisions were almost depleted while the crops were not yet ready to be harvested. In this series, Phan personifies March and August as two siblings. Tám (August) tragically dies from starvation, becoming a forever-hungry ghost, which sets Ba (March) on an endless quest to reconnect with his ghost-sister. Phan depicts the siblings meeting in a dream-like, phantasmagorical space.
