Unstill Stillness
2026
Performance duration: 60 minutes
“I begin with control,
but it never stays.
Everything slips,
slowly,
Repetition is no longer a structure,
it spirals.
The body drifts from its original rhythm
without me quite realizing when it happens.
When exhaustion hits a certain point,
it doesn’t shatter
it only bends.
The mind can no longer hold its format,
yet doesn’t vanish.”
— Nguyễn Hiếu Ngọc, 2026
A response to utopianism, the performance stretched the idea of queer futurity, expanding the conversation around care, queer hope, and the potentialities of existing beyond the reality imposed on queer bodies.
Beginning as a ritual, the artist carried on his back the image of a sacred entity–a blue-skinned body with gray wings. His arms were outstretched, covered in lit candles that slowly burnt out, only to be rekindled by participants in the space as caring gestures. He moved with his body of fire, hovering between endurance and the maintenance of faith. As the candles were burnt down, the flames flickered low, and the wax draped over the body and the ground, care melted into spirals of repetition, stretching the body into unrecognizable gestures, drifting it from the sacred rhythm.
Unstill Stillness is a part of Cruising Utopia, a group exhibition of Ngài, Nhân Phan, Nguyễn Hiếu Ngọc, Nguyễn Hoàng Anh and Vỹ Lân. The performance took place at Rare Sea on Saturday, July 4, 2026, from 19:30 to 20:30.
