Sugar Hunger by Thái Hà

Thái Hà’s poem Sugar Hunger was featured on diaCRITICS, written in response to Liên Trương’s cake painting series presented in An Unbearable Lightness Between Sky and Water, the artist’s solo exhibition at Galerie Quynh.

 

The exhibition weaves together the languages of painting, textile, and food, forming a hybrid diasporic language of love dedicated to Trương’s late mother, who passed away in April 2023. Building on a practice that examines material ideologies and notions of heritage, the works draw from painting techniques and philosophies alongside military, textile, and food histories, tracing the migration of Trương’s family from northern to southern Vietnam, and later to the United States.

 

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, butter and line the base of two cake tins with baking parchment.

 

The artist turns the dial, worn with use so jams at 300.
Hands drag fat across cold metal, translucence crunch over the top.

 

Using a whisk, beat the butter and sugar together, the two strangers an unlikely meeting of grainy mass. Keep whisking until the frenzy of arm against saccharine lumps blur infrared, deep yellow flashing lightning to turn pale.

 

I remember thirsting for sweet
Clear juice boils to turn crystallic
Prising open grandma’s teeth
to find mealy mung beans mashed with a half nail of
Extreme Refinement
I poke my head into her cavemouth
and beg her to spit back out the specks
of sweetsalt I grow up to never eat.

 

Eggs spill their gelatine over butter
to add desirable fluff and shine. The whisk’s balloon drags bloodclouds into the fold that bloodrain into the sea. Above us there seems only sky / and cloud seeding; what is sacred must also weep.

 

Sometimes I see only inversion
sky and land / myths told by shadow
Devils dance with the deceased
Or no, just women, ruling darkness

 

Whisk again, half bag of flour. The other half ration for later.

 

With outstretched arms, tip your bowl into your tins, and watch the ribbons of batter submit to roundness. Bake in the centre of the oven to
reach for the promise
of cake. 

 

Blending memory, food, inheritance, and desire, the text unfolds through the language of recipe and ritual, reflecting on sweetness, hunger, diaspora, and familial intimacy alongside Trương’s layered painterly practice. 

 

 

Read more on diaCRITICS.

September 23, 2025