Aura of After Progress was an event hosted by Vox Populi, a contemporary art space and artist collective. My friend Yolanda He Yang was a speaker at the event and I got invited to be the designer of the event’s poster.
Finding Gold in the Ruins
A month before I designed the poster, I attended Yolanda’s exhibit “Trash Museum (of Dust).” It was an intriguing experience. I was taken around the gallery, as part of the experience, to learn about how trash is being processed at a facility in Philadelphia. Even when the gallery space was sizable, the impression of the size of the facility that I got from what Yolanda described was almost unfathomable. Living in the city, I feel, at times, stuck in my own world. So, being taken out of it and learning about another was a humbling experience.
And I learned a lot. The most important thing? Dust. It exists everywhere. So ubiquitous, it’s almost invisible. However, we never think about how much memory they hold, even when it’s a part of our lives. Dust holds so much of our past, and if not being managed appropriately or guided in the right direction, it’s going to take us to a grim future.
This poster explores that idea. There isn’t a focal point. To get viable information for the show, you have to scan the surroundings. Margins are extremely tight. Objects, words, and numbers are mixed together to create a sense of chaos. It’s up to you, the viewer, to put things together for this poster to make sense. If not, it might as well be dust.
VŨ Nguyễn 