Four Artists Selected for Rising and Sinking Like Mountains in Streams
We are delighted to announce the four emerging artists who will join the Rising and Sinking Like Mountains in Streams project, bringing their unique voices and practices to this UK-Vietnam transnational collaboration exploring the Red River in Hanoi and the River Wye in Wales.
From Vietnam:
Nguyen Huu Hai Duy was born in Hanoi. He started his experience with artistic practices initially through observation. Aside from that, he spends most of his time wandering around, taking note, and archiving into his mind the frivolous and incomprehensible phenomenon.
Thùy Dương (born 1998) lives and works in Hà Nội. She practises writing in order to examine herself and to pray.
From Wales:
Wanda O’Connor is a Lecturer in Creative Writing and co-editor of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. Published both in her native Canada and in the UK, creative and critical writing has appeared in several anthologies and journals, most recently in The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, and Marsh Hawk Review. Her writing explores innovative poetry, ecopoetry, and women’s poetry.
Lowri Hedd Vaughan is a Welsh language lyrical and interdisciplinary creative based in Porthaethwy, whose work moves between poetry, prose, site-responsive practice, story-telling and social art. Flowing through hydrofeminist inquiry and elevated by animist spirituality, her practice holds water, land, community and ancestors as collaborators. A member of Literature Wales’s Representing Wales 2025-26 cohort, she has presented work with Artes Mundi, National Museum Wales, Y Stamp, Testun Testun, Oriel Plas Glyn y Weddw and was selected for our Counterpoint project in 2024 which explored themes of on migration and belonging. As well as her artistic exploration, she facilitates community climate action and bioregional regeneration.
These four artists will work alongside established artists Nhã Thuyên (Vietnam) and montenegrofisher (Luna Montenegro & Adrian Fisher, UK) throughout the project, participating in online collaboration, intensive residencies in Hanoi and along the River Wye, and public performances including at the Hay Festival.
Through collective writing, deep listening, and ecological observation, they will co-create experimental poetic works based on visual scores and graphic notation, responding to the rhythms and stories of these two river ecosystems.
The project brings together diverse practices—from observation and contemplative writing to innovative poetry and hydrofeminist inquiry—creating a rich tapestry of voices exploring rivers as sites of memory, transformation, and shared ecological futures.
Online collaboration begins in April, with residencies taking place in Hanoi (April 2026) and Wales (May-June 2026), culminating in a trilingual digital publication and hybrid London event in September.
Rising and Sinking Like Mountains in Streams is supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme.
