Performance at the opening of Scent from Heaven, FOTODOK Utrecht, 2024
Curated by Daria Tuminas

Ritual of Dreamers is a live performance that extends the narrative of the installation Scent from Heaven, embodying the tension between suffering and healing, destruction and salvation—central to the story of the Agarwood tree and the human longing for redemption.

In this piece, I lay on Agarwood logs embedded with nails—fragments of pain, bodies once whole, now marked. The act of lying down, of attempting to rest, became a struggle. My body contorted and resisted, yet I sought calmness amidst discomfort. The tree’s wounds pressed into my skin, leaving physical traces that mirrored inner turbulence. As the pain settled into a rhythm, my mind began to drift—reaching back to a memory of the tree that once stood in front of my childhood home in Vietnam.

The performance is a meditation on endurance, memory, and the dream of healing. Through bodily engagement with the wounded logs, I connect my own skin and breath to the suffering of the Agarwood—evoking the fragility of all living things, and our shared desire for transcendence.