Portfolio
Thy Truong

Hypnos Agogos,
2020





The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, NL

Video - Installation:
One video, two beamers, three curtains, some hooks, four speakers, sound (source: mix of overlapping video- and self generated sounds)

https://vimeo.com/388622021





Hypnagogia.
Neither awake or asleep.
The state "in-between" that leads into sleep, where all kinds of movement and sensory experiences are fluid. Compresses and processes your day into the following dream. No limitation in either time nor space exist until you wake up.

In an age of information flooding we barely have time or space for the self until we cover our eyes and dim our senses. Sleep or half-asleep-half-awake? When we‘re left alone with our mind, where do we go as we lie in bed? What actually happens with our mind as we slowly fall asleep?

This work is a reaction to The Hague's NESTRUIMTE's show in February 2020 "Fluid Desire" and should have been shown in the exhibition called Born Liquid in March 2020.
Here, I aimed to create an on-screen-like path through the different states of mind while on Hypnagogia.
An ambivalence of un-/sub- and consciousness. Eventually all states of consciousness are intertwined and open for re-creation, again a newformation in dreams and thoughts.

Questions of control and freedom of the mind correlate.

As much as I like to explore a variety of realities, a possible utopia - I believe there‘s a calm sea at the bottom of our mind, when we remove ourselves from the rational.

I‘d Never Speak,
I‘d Rather Sleep
,
2019





The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, NL

Room - Sound - Installation:
White semi-transparent fabric, mattress, pillow, four speakers, spoken word poetry

https://vimeo.com/401393316












„Beyond the horizon, my eyes wander[...]“

Being in the glitch of childhood-daydream and reality.

In this work I intended to create a safe space by turning my head-space inside out. I re-create fragments of childhood-memory and a place I used to put down my guard to speak truth.

By giving my diary and poems my voice and a space, I allow visitors to immerse themselves into my world.
A glitch, in which one is caught in memory, imagination and reality. Acquaintance with the voices that shape meaning - living within oneselves...


Basis Thesis
Year 1+ 2 ,
2019


FHNW Academy of Art and Design / HGK Basel, CH

Three sculptures:
1. Mosh
2.Narbe
3.In Cell

plaster, wire, metal, acrystal, mesh, light

There‘s something about emotional distress that most of us don‘t take seriously. With this work I aimed to question and highlight how we undervalue mental discomfort. Unless it finds institutional value which should be served to critisize. 

Shortly before the end of the year exhibition, I kept my mind around the way we pursue emotionality, how and if we explore our inner self as well as how much it leaves traces. I focused on exploring and questioning the behaviour in society in terms of expressing the matter of feelings such like mental pressure and if or how it leaves its mark.
I‘ve always observed an aloof attitude as it comes to such subject, even though our emotionality in relation to our psyche is as omni-present as the nature we‘re perceiving, but do we show the scars and why not?
Here I show a variety of how mental distress could look like, if it would leave any obvious trace.

My previous studies in Psycholoy has always been helpful in my work and frequently serves me as reference. 
Here, I often have found myself describing the feeling of pressure and other mental states in a rather picturesque way. Eventually it seemed necessary to apply more relevance to my words in order to allow room for playful and intuitive expression that enables me to embody emotional feelings.






Lockdown Journal

Review AUTonom 3
Work in Process
february 2020 onward and into quarantine (May)
Terms, subjects and obsessions
- introspection: observation of ones own internal, mental and emotional movement
- places of escapism: constant changing comfort-zone / movemebt, safe spaces, sapce as a body
- myths - ancient stories - fantasies and desires: in childhood, memories, obsessions as a child,
- vagueness, glitch
process

Abstractions:
Inspired by Shadows



The Hague, NL

Acrylic paint, red string, wire
sketch - process - potential end result

(april - work in process)
Picking up one of my ideas I started few month ago and ever since have neglected.

Inspired by shadows which is understood as a part or an extension of the body, that can never be removed.
Your own shadow is taken for granted and always forgotten darker side.
It doesn't look like you, at least you won't recognise it as such while (day)light changes its silhouette.

I like the idea of the shadow as your spiritual other - as an extension of your soul, a mystery hidden from your consciousness self but someday invisible for the naked eye.

Tired souls move like shadows inside the body, in need of rest, a cleanse - let ourself hang loose and letting go from responsibilities that aren't yours.
Hit by the fatique.
Acryl paint, string, wire
Your skin as like a shadow.
I imagine to strip off your shadows like as snake strips off its skin. The weight of its carrier of my skin and hang it on a rope and rest in the pure placel like paradise - the garden of eden for example.
(may)
What if the snake never persuaded Eve to steal the apple from Eden's tree?
What if the devil would live in paradise?
Where would it live?
Where would I go?

(in process)

video - first draft
https://youtu.be/n5S6CTmPEmc

Research / Pool

In the past few month I re-discovered one of my childhood obsessions. I used to steal my older brother's school lectures to read different books and one of them was the greek mythology.

Their stories gave my life lessons in many phases of my life until now, especially the world of the immortales, more presicely the one of the spirits called "daimones".

In the following period, I spent a lot of time thinking, exchanging ideas with others and reading into mythologies and/or stories in christian bible.

One particular story attracted me the most, and that was when Adam und Eve got seduced by the snake. After eating from the forbidden apple that Eve stole from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they got abadonned from the garden Eden (...)

Inspired by
Eros & Thanatos
,
2020




The Hague, NL

Black ink fineliner, softbrush on A1 200g paper
(march - may)
Mind Map
I'm not going to talk about this more deeply

(may)
Red and black acrylic paint on tin foil
I enjoy discovering and exploring materials and find different ways.
I don't see the point of just painting on canvas.
I'm figuring out how I make this hang in space.
What if the snake never seduced Eve to steal the apple from Eden's tree?
What if the devil would live in paradise?
(process)

Not Death but Paradise

trying to find and create the right setting for the shot.

tin-foil, red acrylics, two LED lights and house-plants

photography

Shadows / Snake skin in Eden

The questions where our sins go and our ability to forgive ourself, while shedding your skin peeling off your darkness. Where does it go if they aren't with us?

Trying to find connection, building a dialogue between the objects I've been creating.

leaving signs or making traces

Safe Space

(may - june)
journal

an approach

I follow three questions or aim for three things, everytime I create

1. Is this a space or a surface of discovery?

2. For whom and where am I creating?  Institution or community?

3. Am I in joy and passion conceptually and creatively?

Poetry

selected words, 02/2020 - 05/2020
When I'm blocked in my process of creating I reach out to my pen, that helps me rinse out states of overflown agitation

But this booklet or diary is also my life and one of my most precious things I own. In there, I put down words, which can't escape anywhere else than through my pen as well as they often find more peace there than through my voice.

This is where I sketch my concepts and ideas.

A Body A Home
A Body My Hostage 


[I] As I open my eyes, my mind keeps wandering Travelling beyond borders Away, off the mind that kept me hostage in this corps As I open my eyes, my pupils leave Trying to escape the noisy mind Visiting old images almost forgotten feelings Colours only real when I go 
[II] I want to move out Move out of this body, strip away my flesh and skin Slowly, gently strip the soft delicate cell of skin down my spine vertebral by vertebral Freeing my bones I want to leave this host I call body - let it rest - collapsing Arms and legs dangling I want to move forward without the skull dragging with me like extra luggage I wish to be weightless Feeling the self that is mine and not just the muscle and bones Letting go from the itching scars on my left thigh or my right hip, my face or my lips  I want to cry without tears and fly without fears I’d love to fall asleep without thinking of tomorrows voices I wish to leave my home, my body my house Nothing is mine This corps I no more belong toThis corps I need to escape fromBut scared of other bodiesHit by the false light that blindedMy host’s eyes This time I shall leave without any remains I will go and search, eventually for a body I call mine A corps I shall inhabit and call home A body without the intention of taking me hostage 

[III] And while I’m gone  Leaving a shell Only the eyes moving Travelling to old places Visiting long forgotten emotions Replaying mili-seconds of ecstasy Followed by tongue tasting nectar Spreading, filling my mouth  pure joyBut never lasting in foreverThan sudden sharp nails  Grasping my neck Pulling at my skeletonWaiting for my senses to returnMaking me begFingers Touching my eyes I could not see Scared that I had lost my sight Feeling a firm coat of water on the tip of my finger - still and silentJust the softness of my sentiment 

By Night

I'm calm
in the deep devious nights I'm finally able to think
I'm capable to sink
into the buried corners of thoughts
speaking out unworthy
lungs drunk on soul
into the nights I submerge
freeing my senses from all sins
it's so quiet I can hear my heart speaking truth
using language close to my mothers eyes
by night I see oceans
crisp clear like the universe

Maybe I'm not that smart

sometimes I think the ghosts of my past are whispering poetry into my ears, their words echo in my head make my mind think foreign tongues  and I believe they're all mine.

Untitled

the stars here aren't the same
seven and ahalf hours south is where it is the brightest
seven and ahalf hours south-east it goes
where heaven seems to be closer
but home occurs to be so far
where did my heart go?
oh my dear, don't be afraid
there's a gap in the clouds

Eyes Dreaming

beyond the horizon
my eyes wander
wonder about what lies behind the sky
behind the love and life
that’s covered by the fire
hidden behind my eyes
however
this place makes me dream about another reality
I rarely understand
when I stand in my own world
reality leaves me
rarely feels right
more wrong
and when I’m here
all realities feel high
and the many things that lie behind the many skies
seem low enough to be real
as if I’d live in a dream-
world of the sky and wander around its mind

A series of excess

softly carried afield where the eyes won't meet
like a disease
I'd spread myself out beyond the borders
like a disease
but just with good news

Signs

The only way we communicate
Moving meanings shifting words
It never changes, really
Signs
Lines covered in ink all over
Our minds
Matter does it
Signs
If echoes could speak
Signs
Light as bright as your eyes
I never knew
I’ve always misunderstood
I didn’t listen
Signs
An organic net of touches and grips
Voices and hits
Signs
It always moves
They always transform
We never see them, actually
Fear lies maybe
Signs

BodyHomeHouse

Video - first try - first cut

https://youtu.be/nBEshVDksBM