The agricultural lesson: First water, second fertilizer, third diligence, fourth seeds

Performance by Phụ Lục (Nguyễn Huy An, Ngô Thành Bắc, Vũ Đức Toàn, Nguyễn Văn Song)
2012
Japan Foundation, Hanoi, Vietnam
As part of Nhà Sàn Collective's Skylines with flying people 2, curated by Nguyễn Phương Linh.


Buồng Phụ Lục (Phụ Lục Room)


Context
This project emerges in a turbulent, diverse, complex, and chaotic moment—both in terms of socio-historical conditions and the cultural-artistic landscape. It is a time that makes visible the internal divisions and conflicts (in outlooks, methods, and concerns) between different generations of artists.

Development
Positioning Phụ Lục within the broader Vietnamese contemporary art community reveals the frictions and unevenness in the field’s development. New waves and new generations of artists continue to appear, bringing with them varied educational backgrounds and social standing. This has made the study of contemporary art far more complex than it was a decade ago. Phụ Lục can be seen as a mid-generation collective—not belonging to the earlier two generations but also no longer “new faces.” They still carry unresolved issues from previous phases while confronted with successive waves of emerging artists. For Phụ Lục, questions of identity, locality, and folk traditions persist. Though such concerns may now seem outdated or deprioritized in favor of urgent global questions, Phụ Lục insists on pursuing them—because for their generation and those younger, these questions remain largely unanswered, even silenced.

What Phụ Lục presents
Their presentation is, in essence, a continuous series of responses to these questions. Phụ Lục answers through nearly five years of practice—through symbols they mold and transform; through sketches and speculative proposals; through fragmentary poems and sound recordings; through countless collected objects; through photographs documenting processes and archival videos; through both monumental and miniature sculptures; through interior set-ups and installations. All of this is gathered inside a dimly lit, makeshift “Phụ Lục Room”—a space that, by its very name, evokes qualities of being secondary, marginal, damp, dark, discreet, and provisional.

Inventory (open structure, continually expandable with new symbols and objects):
  • Toàn: a column-and-beam system replicating Chùa Một Cột (One-Pillar Pagoda) at 1:1 scale; Tân Cương pillow (1 yến of Tân Cương tea leaves repurposed as a herbal pillow); plaster statue of Hồ Chí Minh; “outhouse” structure; “trick for pulling teeth” proposal ; …
  • An: shadow-scroll motif; nail from an old house / well-bottom mud; Searching photo series (objects + poetic text); handmade paper from areca-nut residue; Hoàn Kiếm Lake Four Seasons photo series; proposals such as 1,000 old women & 1,000 areca husks; planting hibiscus and malabar spinach along the Việt Nam–China border; …
  • Bắc: Six-slab cake; hybrid turtle-crane sculpture (Ụcrà); Cement Rice; carved wooden scroll; Weighing Books (testing density); …
  • Song: personal box; cake; photo series; …
  • Đức: performance video; lightning rod sculpture; …
  • Đăng: screensaver; timecard board; name cards; …
  • Numerous other documents and materials relating to Phụ Lục.

Last updated: 06/09/2025 — subject to continuous revision