The Pressure of Becoming in Tony Tran’s Love Tenderly

A review of Tony Tran’s Love Tenderly, where the performance centered around themes of inherited trauma, memory, and the pressure of assimilating in a predominantly white society as a person of color.

Words & Photos courtesy of Elle Andrea
July 11, 2026

For over 11 minutes straight, Tony Tran tried to swallow a handkerchief whole.

He carefully fits the fabric into his mouth, bit by bit. For everyone in the room, the process was agonisingly slow. The act itself went on long enough for the audience to sit in a mix of tension and fascination. 

Everyone is silent, there is no explanation as to why. It's just a view of somebody trying to make room for something that refuses to fit. 

The stage was set in 98B COLLABoratory in Escolta, Manila. Tony Tran’s Love Tenderly, the title also being a direct English translation of his Vietnamese father’s name,  was a performance that slowly unfolds as a sequence of rituals rather than a conventional narrative.

The Norwegian-Vietnamese artist began his act by painting his teeth with black pigment, a Vietnamese tradition that was practised by his grandmother and the last one to ever do so in her village. The painted teeth are a reference and a dedication only to her. 

He then stands on each side of the stage laughing and greeting the audience with a smoke in hand and what follows are moments of him taking his clothes off, layer by layer, crawling in all fours, he even poured ashes all over his bare skin, all while a ritual song echoed throughout the space.

The performance was rooted in his family’s history. Tran’s parents fled Vietnam during the war. The themes were centered towards memory, migration, and the weight of traumas being passed down. 

Parts of it were hard to digest, literally. Some scenes are uncomfortable to watch, especially the one where he struggled to fit a handkerchief in his mouth. He later said that that part was about him growing up in Norway, living life as a person of color in a predominantly white society. It was a metaphor with assimilation and the pressure to conform and for identities that do not always comfortably co-exist.  

Themes of faith were also present in his performance, Tran shared that his father had hoped that he would become a priest. A role that's usually associated with obedience and devotion. 

However, he chose a different path, but traces of those expectations surfaced throughout his act. 

What sets Love Tenderly apart from the rest is that the performance refuses to offer easy explanations. It was intense. 

Towards the end of it, it seemed like there was something inside of him just begging to be let out. Whether it was grief, memory or expectation. It surely manifested throughout the performance. An exorcism, nothing supernatural. Just an attempt to confront and release something that he’s been carrying for a long time.

After the performance, the audiences left with more questions rather than answers. And to be honest, the ambiguity of the whole act feels intentional. You’re asked not to decode it but to witness the emotional weight and physical labor of carrying histories that span generations.