In Object of Cotton Fibre (2024), Dinh Thi Tham Poong deepens her exploration of geometric patterns, a motif that has long shaped her visual language. Evolving from the triangles and rectangles of her earlier works, where human figures blended with natural landscapes to create shifting perspectives, this new work shifts the focus to the viewer. In the absence of human figures, the viewer becomes the one who interacts with the geometric shapes. Geometry, once a symbolic layer on canvas, now emerges in three-dimensional form, transforming the flat into the tactile.

The use of fabric draws from her intimate connection with traditional, handwoven indigenous textiles—materials threatened by the advance of industrialization. Yet, in the quiet, repetitive act of sewing, Poong reflects on time, on womanhood, and on the very mundanity of these practices. There is both a playful curiosity and a reflective patience at work here. As she sews, patches, embroiders, and weaves, Poong speaks to a tradition both enduring and nearly forgotten—an everyday labour that ties the present to a distant past.

"Sewing pieces of cloth into clothes has long been the work of our women," the artist notes. "It is both attractive and wanting to be forgotten because of its natural presence in life." The geometric simplicity of the triangle, a shape that has haunted her imagination the longest, becomes the starting point of a memory puzzle—woven with threads of history, cotton, and the relentless movement of the needle. Through these sculptures, she invites us into a meditation on the materiality of life—on the rhythmic repetition of tasks, the quiet persistence of memory, and the beauty found in the labour of hands.