Trees: Natural Cultural Heritage

The on-going project “Trees: Natural Cutural Heritage’’ started in 2015 as a response to the patterns of urbanization and frightening pace of deforestation in Vietnam. As a multimedia artist whose works span the mediums of sculpture, installation, public art, painting, drawing, performance art, video-making, and artist books, Ly draws on these practices to meditate on Vietnamese histories, cultures, and current sociopolitical issues with local communities through this project.

Ly Hoàng Ly’s “Trees: Natural Cultural Heritage” project began with a Facebook post on March 21, 2015, where she applied zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh’s “hugging meditation” into her process of creating a site-specific durational performance art piece “Hugging Trees – Hugging Your Loved Ones – Hugging Yourself”, inviting people all over the world to perform with the trees in their respective location for three consecutive days, as a response to the Hanoi government’s plan to cut down 6,700 ancient trees in Hanoi at that time. The “Trees” project asks vital worldmaking/world-unmaking questions about the connection of Trees and People and the loss of trees and human mortality.

With this project, Ly Hoàng Ly considers the daily life streets as art space for the durational performance and installation, the commuters and passengers are both audience and collaborated performers. Ly expects to have a culmination of an exhibition for this project in a public space.