Performance by Mai Bach-Ngoc Nguyen. ARTefACTe 2026

Mai Bach-Ngoc Nguyen
Unknown Name
Performance: 40’

The Vietnamese artist based in Canada will undertake an artistic residency at Homesession during October 2026. During the residency, she will present the performance piece «Unknown name» as part of ARTefACTe2026.

Unknown name is a performance that explores mourning through memory, absence and disappearance. The piece starts from a set of works in which the artist experiments with performative methodologies to investigate the ways in which mourning can be inhabited and represented.

In it, a ghostly figure (the artist herself transformed into a pond) becomes the axis of an action that moves between the bodily, the poetic and the spectral. The piece reflects on what remains after disappearance and on the traces of absence in bodies, spaces and memory.

“I am reading about the power of death, power through death and power over death. Perhaps it is not this finitude that interests me, but the words that derive from it: spectre, unease and echo. I am writing all this [to myself] from another place. I write this way to avoid the burden of remembering.” Mai Bach-Ngoc Nguyen

The artist is in residence at Homesession in October 2026, thanks to a collaboration between Écart and Centre Clark.
The performance is carried out in collaboration with ARTefACTe 2026.