the mountain hangs over us with benevolence

When I was young in Hanoi, my parents would point out to me places that have disappeared: old gates and roads, paddy fields, even bomb craters that have been built over and up into the cityscape. Absence and openness are part of life and history and fuel the city, which both creates and erases, displaces and heals.

For the mountain, I cut patterns into tarp panels such that no material is removed; the panels unfold, drape, project volumes and patterns of light and shadows against itself and its surroundings. Tarp, used to cover and define sites that would become parts of the city, gives out to the open air. Empty air becomes the medium whereby the flat surface does not build, but rather yield, break, collapse into new forms. The resulting structure becomes through entropy and loss.