floating (2025)

Born from a dream about bidding farewell to my homeland, Lưng Chừng Giữa / Floating is a journey to redefine the concept of "hometown" and the internal migration from Bình Định to Sài Gòn. I seek out my đồng hương (people who share a hometown),
visiting their homes and engaging in intimate conversations to understand their experiences, memories, and the internal conflict between staying or returning. By blending candid documentation with re-enacted scenes, I merge individual images into a collective flow, blurring distinct identities within the "in-betweenness" of migrant life. Inspired by Gaston Bachelard, I look beyond the physical dwelling to explore living spaces as psychological phenomena. The three chapters - Unpacking, Living in a Home, and Places as Memories - are encapsulated within a styrofoam box, transforming a common object of migrant labour into a vessel for fragile connections to one's origins.