AMSTERDAM.- In 2024, Hiền Hoàng was awarded the 18th Foam Paul Huf Award. Now, Foam presents her solo exhibition Garden of Entanglement, which encourages a multi-sensory reflection on the connection between humans and nature. Her practice is deeply shaped by interdisciplinary collaborations with scientists and technologists which reveal the ambivalent role of technology as both a means to understand nature and a force that distances us from it.

Hoàng’s multidisciplinary practice seamlessly weaves together photography, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. Central to her work is the theme of migration—explored not only through the personal lens of her family’s history, but also through the lasting traces of colonialism embedded in nature. In the exhibition Garden of Entanglement, Hoàng explores these narratives through three of her recent projects: Garden of Entanglement, Scent from Heaven, and Across the Ocean.

The eponymous project Garden of Entanglement explores the hidden vibrational life of trees, investigating how they perceive and respond to their environment through motion and sound. With this work, Hoàng shows how trees stand as quiet witnesses to centuries of global exchange. Developed in close collaboration with researchers at the University of Florence and the University of Kassel, the project unveils the subtle dynamics of tree behavior whilst inviting audiences to reconsider their relationship with the natural world. At the heart of the project lies a poetic question: What would trees remember about us once we are gone?

Scent from Heaven investigates the paradoxical relationship between suffering and transformation through the story of the Agarwood tree, a fragrant and highly valued wood native to Southeast Asia. Agarwood, revered for its heavenly scent and symbolic associations with healing and redemption, is formed only after the tree is infected or wounded as a result of human intervention. Scent from Heaven explores the friction between the suffering of nature and humanity’s longing for healing and salvation. As such, reflecting on how beauty and value often arise from destruction and trauma.

Whereas Garden of Entanglement and Scent from Heaven focus on the life of trees, Across the Ocean reflects on human experiences, in particular Hoàng’s aunt’s migration from Vietnam to Germany. Using food as a lens to examine identity, memory, and cultural stereotypes, Hoàng incorporates familiar ingredients like rice and soy sauce to comment on the way Western cultures perpetuate reductive notions of ‘Asianness’ and reduce complex identities to simplistic tropes. Food, which is deeply tied to heritage and everyday life, becomes the medium through which the artist questions how cultural perceptions are formed, sustained, and distorted.

Hiền Hoàng (b. 1990) is a Vietnamese-born, Hamburg-based multimedia artist whose work locates itself at the intersection of human memory, nature, and technology. Hiền Hoàng was featured in FOOD! the 63rd issue of Foam Magazine. In 2023, Hoàng was a finalist for the Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles for Across the Ocean. That same year, she received an Art Grant from the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media for Scent from Heaven. Building on that project, Garden of Entanglement was supported by an EU Commission S+T+ARTS Art Grant in 2024. Hoàng’s ability to blend ecological narratives with innovative, data-driven artistic approaches earned her the prestigious Foam Paul Huf Award in 2024. Hoàng’s work has been exhibited in leading art venues such as CentroCentro Cibeles in Madrid and at influential festivals such as Les Rencontres d’Arles.