By: Enoch Yeo

A building stands tall in the city of New York. Inside, one can see the art of a tragic battle: mobiles and bells, all made from bombshells.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s exhibition will occupy the third floor of the New Museum, beginning June 29. Films, artifacts, and pictures will fill this floor.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, an artist who graduated from the University of California, Irvine, won the 2023 Joan Miro Prize in Barcelona. “Tuan Andrew Nguyen: Radiant Remembrance” will be his first major solo exhibition in the United States.

His film, “The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon,” the heart of the exhibition, shows Vietnam’s Quang Tri province. Although the museum is not opened yet, it is available to watch online.

A former member of an artist’s collective called the Propellor Group, Nguyen works on sculptures and art about the history of Vietnam.

“Since the Propeller Group, a lot of my work has been about memory,” he said in a video interview from his studio in Ho Chi Minh City. “And how memory functions to help us deal with trauma. Intergenerational trauma.”

Ho Chi Minh City is where Nguyen was born. When he was only two, his parents brought him over to America to escape the Vietnam War. He first grew up in Texas, then in California.

In order to prepare his film, Nguyen went back to Vietnam to stay with his grandmother, who had not escaped.

Most of the inspiration for his stories comes from his grandfather’s younger brother, who was forced to fight against his own country. But it was not until Nguyen went back to Vietnam that he understood the stories of those who witnessed and even were part of such a bloody war.

Sources:

Rpse, Frank, Making Art Out of Bombshells and Memories in Vietnam, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/arts/design/tuan-andrew-nguyen-vietnam-new-museum-video.html