Ho Dieu Bao Nguyen

'The Heterotopias' is an installation of four discs suspended from the ceiling, painted on either side with acrylic and soft pastels, representing distinct heterotopias, drawing references from what Foucault called "magical, though not less meaningful, spaces that exist beyond the mainstream and harbour their own rules and practices". Expanding on the concept of "other spaces", the work invites the viewers to transcend the confines of everyday life as it embodies a journey through themes of otherness, liminality, oblivion, and hybridity. Eyes are often, although a bit cliché, called “windows to the souls” and serve as portals to these 'other' spaces throughout this journey. The discs are arranged in an order that tells a story, from the sunflower, rising above a blue planet right in the middle of a circle, to the next disc adorned with symbols of femininity, representing Mother Earth and wrapped in shades of pink, to the peeled off Yin-Yang eyes to reveal stages of opposite forces yearning to unite. The reverse sides of the four discs explore heterotopia worlds of marginalisation and exploitation, as well as deindividualisation, the desperation to escape the abyss to discover our existence, and our shared humanity when we gaze into another's soul.