Contributing essay published as part of the exhibition 6 ½ WEEKS — Ngoc Nau. Only The Present Moment Is Real (30 November 2024—12 January 2025), curated by Anna Brohm, Museum Folkwang, Essen (DE).
»In Ngoc Nau’s video-based collages, meditative yoga exercises are juxtaposed with controlled coal-mining explosions and with cockfights on 3D renderings of futurist landscapes. Without playing these opposing poles off against each other, the artist uses the overlap between her documentary and her constructed images to consciously tread the thin line between the challenges of progress and tradition, of harmony and alienation, of inner and outer worlds, as well as their possible coexistence.«
