Vy Trịnh
b.1996, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Bio:
Vy Trịnh is a sculptor, whose work explores how networks of objects extend beyond themselves and reflect the larger socio-economic textures and conditions of contemporary Vietnam. Her practice follows the traffic of objects, different forms of labor and agency, and the sites where these categories are constantly being negotiated and improvised. Vy holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from Parsons School of Design. Select group exhibitions include Worthless Studios (Brooklyn, NY), Atelier (Philadelphia, PA), Automat (Philadelphia, PA), White Columns (New York, NY), and Gallery MC (New York, NY). Vy is the recipient of the 2022 Christopher Lyon Memorial Award. She currently lives and works between Ho Chi Minh City and New York.
Statement:
My current work explores how networks of objects extend beyond themselves and reflect the larger socio-economic textures and conditions of my hometown, Saigon, Vietnam after the neoliberal Đổi Mới reforms. Materials and objects are sourced from different economies and ecologies—infrastructural, automotive, electric, discarded. I incorporate and work with found objects through addition, subtraction, and calibration to maintain the integrity of the economies and industries they come from. Tying, balancing, bundling, and welding are making tendencies borrowed from the city dwellers and manual workers I’ve observed and grown up around. I am interested in the ways objects constantly mutate and adapt as they adopt multiple lives through the circulation between different sites and usages.
In my sculptures, methodologies and material content are intertwined, insisting on resourcefulness and a make-shift ethos indebted to the city’s polyrhythmic, cyclical, and sedimented material environment. My work follows the traffic of objects, different forms of labor and agency, and the sites where these categories are constantly being negotiated and improvised.