I approached Dương Thùy Dương’s works without any preconceptions. No distinctions. No expectations. No socializing. Nor “convention.” All that remained was the pure visual expression of art perceived through sensibility (sinnlichkeit). From the ultimate result of this contemplation process (gedacht/denken in German), a line is drawn back to the artist's essence, in pursuit of the question: Who is Dương Thùy Dương? 

When I once wrote a review on the music of Russian pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, I carefully chose three keywords—romanticism, exile, and nostalgia. This stemmed from his own words in an interview with Leonard Liebling of The Musical Courier in 1939, shortly after his arrival in America: “I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.” Geographic displacement often accompanies, or even intensifies, a greater, more profound rupture in one’s spirit and cultural identity. Just as Vietnamese people at home and abroad are distinguished by terms like “overseas Vietnamese” (overseas world, overseas literature, overseas music), today we find ourselves familiar with terms like “global citizen” or “borderless art.” And yet, within this seemingly boundless, universal language, there are artists who feel isolated in the space between worlds, floating. These solitary artists also appear when they do not seek their roots, identity, or nationality to separate or be different from the world. For them, the narrative isn’t about a drop merging with the ocean, or the sea entering a single drop. Instead, they embody an unfathomable ocean. Dương Thùy Dương seems to fall into this category.

We speak of artists floating in mid-air—those who belong to no specific biosphere or territory. In 19th-century Europe, there was a common satirical phrase: “The English rule the sea [referring to the British navy], the French rule the land [referring to Napoleon’s army], and the Germans rule the sky [referring to metaphysicians].” According to this notion, these artists belong to the metaphysical realm. They exist beyond all borders, their thoughts transcending all tangible reality, creating their own artistic worlds without needing geographical or cultural elements to define their identity. Like metaphysicians, they craft a timeless, locationless space where free forms and spiritual aspirations flourish, unburdened by physical or traditional limitations.

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