28 Feb. 2025

On Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi's The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it at the Esker

—Did you know my Mom told me that there used to be pirates waiting to catch and rob you if you tried to leave Vietnam?
—That's not true!
—It's true!!

After riding the elevator up to the fourth floor, pushing through the revolving doors, saying hello to the person sitting at the desk and hanging up my jacket, I walk towards Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi's exhibition at the Esker and sit myself on the corner of the plinth-turned bench. Everything is rich in blue. I can see the blue walls, the speakers painted blue, a small blue wooden panel obscuring the view of the thermostat. As I'm watching the video, Into The Violet Belly, I see other visitors out of the corner of my eye. A few were seated before I arrived. Others sneak in. I become so aware of my body and everyone else's. Nobody shouts "places, people!" and yet we all find our spots on this set.

I see that the walls are blue before it gets obscured by darkness the deeper I get into the room. For a few seconds at a time, the blue walls are illuminated by the film—a mother holding another mother, a chicken, in her arms in overexposed lighting.

Nguyen-Chi, Thuy Han. The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it. 2025.

Nguyen-Chi's exhibition, The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it, encompasses more than just video. It is this, plus the chromakey blue, my body, and the bodies I can hear shuffling. All of us are witnesses and active participants in this story: a mother telling her daughter about her journey leaving Vietnam: A lie that masked her as an egg seller, and the jump into freezing water after being caught by Thai pirates. This story is soaked in a nostalgic innocence and the freezing cold conditions of what it means to leave everything she had once known.

This is just one retelling of the story by an egg once laid in Vietnam, diffusing like particles to escape turmoil. So I think to myself, I have heard of this story before. I heard it from my mom.. My friends' moms… I know this story like fables I have heard. In effect, they all exist the same; stories that are too intangible for me to fully understand as real.

The camera slowly flips the horizon of sky/water to water/sky. My head feels like it is hanging upside down. I see the anemic presence of particles in my vision. The sky is the surface of the water when you are under it.

Constantly, I am reminded of the process of Into the Violet Belly as a part of it. I see unrendered particles in a 3D modelling software. I wonder what it means to use this metaphor of digitally generated particles in the context of real migrants? What does it do to birth and create these sprites and to program them to move randomly (especially knowing that code programmed to be "random" merely follows an untraceable mathematical algorithm)? I see a mother and daughter reviewing footage I will see just a minute later, I hear the voice of someone directing another to wait 10 seconds before speaking so the footage captured has enough space to trim at the beginning, and I am bathed in blue. Meta is not the word I would use to describe it. The narrator's point of view is within the crafted story, the reviewing of the footage, and those in the gallery witnessing it too…This review is a part of it. It feels like fiction retelling it to you, but it is my experience.

If you read multiple reviews of The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it, and you think, I have heard this story before, know it is exactly the story you may think it is, but can never be the rendition you personally experience. I see the chroma blue once more when the film ends. As I exit the room, the darkness turns from black to blue and I see light. I come out of the water.