artLIVE – ‘Walking in the Mist’, an exhibition that opens like a doorway to long-buried wounds that, though silent, have never truly faded. These are the unnamed sorrows that quietly awaken, yearning to be seen, understood, and soothed.
Like the shifting fog that conceals and reveals in the same breath, the exhibition invites viewers to walk through layers of memory and emotion, each step tracing the boundaries between remembrance and oblivion.
The exhibition ‘Walking in the Mist’ marks the first solo milestone of artist Tran Minh Thai, a deeply personal journey that moves between pain and renewal. Rather than trying to erase his scars, Thai chooses to converse with them, listening to the faint heartbeat of wounds that linger within the body, within memories, and within years of silence.
His art becomes a language of healing, one that speaks not through words but through the textures of clay, the weight of wood, and the pauses between spaces.
Coming from an architectural background, Tran Minh Thai approaches art as a way to build spaces for memories and scars. For him, creation is not only an act of shaping but also a process of cleansing, transforming inner obsessions into forms and materials.
Every surface, every object, becomes a living witness to human vulnerability. Through his hands, the boundaries between structure and spirit blur, and the exhibition space itself turns into a breathing organism, both a shelter and a mirror for the soul.
The exhibition gathers 12 works of sculpture, installation, and photography — fragments of emotion bound together by roots, soil, wood, ropes, fabric, and paper, all intertwined beneath a delicate yet enduring ceramic glaze.
Each material carries its own story, its own memory of touch and transformation. The coarse texture of rope, the fragile transparency of ceramics, and the soft decay of soil come together to form a quiet symphony of endurance and impermanence.
With his architectural sensibility, Thai brings a spatial awareness that turns material into witness, holding the traces of both life and loss. He employs the burnout technique in ceramics as a subtle metaphor.
Fire may consume matter, yet it leaves behind traces like memory, growing deeper and more indelible with time. This technique becomes his way of confronting the impermanence of things, of accepting that even destruction can bear beauty when seen through the lens of remembrance.
Each piece exists in the tension between the raw and the pure, the broken and the reborn. Twisted roots, tangled ropes, and translucent ceramics merge to tell a wordless story of pain, endurance, and the longing for healing.
Within the mist, the viewer seems able to touch the breath of memory itself and sense its slow movement between fading and presence. The air within the gallery feels dense, as if carrying whispers from the past, urging visitors to pause, to breathe, and to listen to the quiet echoes of their own inner landscapes.
“Not all wounds are visible. Some lie deep within the body, within memory, within the silence that has lasted for years. They do not vanish but become part of us, like skin, like breath.” – Artist Tran Minh Thai
That calm voice opens the world of ‘Walking in the Mist’, where humanity learns to live with its wounds and to accept them as part of the natural order. Thai’s art does not seek to glorify suffering but to acknowledge it with tenderness.
Through the interplay of light and shadow, fragility and strength, he reminds us that healing is not about forgetting but about allowing the scars to breathe.
The exhibition quietly poses a question: What remains after pain has passed? Perhaps within that hazy space, we learn to stand again, to breathe, and to move forward softly yet with unwavering strength.
Like mist after rain, the experience of ‘Walking in the Mist’ lingers long after one leaves the gallery, subtle, haunting, and quietly transformative.
‘Walking in the Mist’ is not merely an exhibition but a state of being where past and present, body and spirit, suffering and rebirth dissolve into one another, like a boundless fog embracing all forms and thoughts.
As viewers stand before each work, they are not merely observing but encountering themselves in the fragile intersection between loss and continuation, silence and revival.
The exhibition ‘Walking in the Mist’ took place from September 28 to October 30, 2025, at Gate Gate Gallery, 230/18 Pasteur, Xuan Hoa Ward, Ho Chi Minh City.
Photo: Gate Gate Gallery
