During the quiet of the 2021 lockdown, Y Nguyen rediscovered a childhood joy — shaping form with nothing but old paper, glue, and flour. Trained in architecture and once enamored with ceramics, he found the secrets of porcelain too guarded, the kilns out of reach. So he turned to a craft that needed no fire — only patience and imagination.

For a new collaboration with GIVE Sustainable, created for a five-star hotel in Saigon, Y Nguyen sculpted a silent orchestra: trumpets, violins, and traditional gongs — all in papier-mâché. Each piece echoes the spirit of opera, not through sound, but through stillness.

These are not mere decorations.

They are sculptures of memory —

crafted from nothing but paper, and everything but voice.