"One Take/ Take One" BY VY TRINH

One Take/Take One first took place in the Thủ Thiêm peninsula, a new construction zone across the Saigon River from the center of the city in the summer of 2022. Due to the mass rise in unemployment during Covid-19, many workers (often migrants from other provinces along the Mekong delta) have lost their jobs due to employment shortages and/or restricted mobility across different zones in the city and cannot go back to their hometowns. This has resulted in many forms of make-shift temporary jobs around different construction zones in the city.

I followed the journey of workers like Mr. Linh and his colleagues who work as metal sellers around local scrapyard businesses in the area. Mr. Linh sources metal scraps buried below construction sites with his metal detector and sells these to local yards as his daily earnings.

I followed the journey of workers like Mr. Linh and his colleagues who work as metal sellers around local scrapyard businesses in the area. Mr. Linh sources metal scraps buried below construction sites with his metal detector and sells these to local yards as his daily earnings. While working with Mr. Linh, the project continued to follow the traffic of materiality (metal scraps) and the flow of labor, leading me to different sites that associated with different economies across the city.

Title: Untitled Fans (2022) [Pictured above and below]
Dimension: dimension variable
Medium: Fan guards and brass.

During my fieldwork, I've noticed many different types of economies (construction, metal scavenging, sourcing, and recycling) entangled within different processes and sites across the city. The materials that I've incorporated in these sculptures are either bought from Mr. Linh, the recycling vendors that Mr. Linh sold his scraps to, and/ or the small vendors that those materials circulated within and economies that they emerged from.

Title: Untitled Ring (2022) [Pictured above and below]
Dimension: dimension variable
Medium: Fan guard, steel, and brass.