01: Vessel   02: Burning   03: Foil   04: Soft
Editorial notes
I put my headscarf on when I get into the car. The car trip is only a few minutes, I think, trying to convince myself. If I remove my scarf and the driver asks me to put it back on, I might get into an argument with him, then I would cancel my ride and would have to request another one, so I would be late for my appointment. I’ve heard of some cases where drivers in order to avoid being fined, have rejected the ride if the passenger was not wearing hijab. 
(in Tagalog) This conversation is an extension of our podcast, titled Isang Oras. The correspondence of text and images in this entry followed an outline prompted by our title, which thoughtfully involves an exercise of threading a timeline (from 2012 to 2016 until the present). Along with the changing atmosphere/s and landscape/s, this correlation between the roles we take as artists and as citizens has been a processual approach in our attempts to understand working and living, drawing paths onwards, and creating patterns that form a sense of the self and the whole.
During a cremation, fire serves as a portal between worlds, allowing passage from this realm to the next. I have only personally witnessed one cremation in my life – my Didun’s. It was during the peak of the pandemic in 2020 so my family and I, stuck in Singapore, watched through FaceTime as her lifeless body, wrapped in white sheets, was carried to the pyre.
AP Nguyễn: Degrees Hot
Cường Minh Bá Phạm
I met AP a little before Covid-19 had disrupted our lives, yet it was only from being part of a group exhibition, No Place Like Home Part II (2023), that we were able to truly cross paths again. Thanks to this project, I was able to interact with AP and her art practice, her lived experience and our shared love of fried food. This conversation is centred around different ‘degrees’ – as temperature and angles.



published in London, UK | 2023–2024