Welcome to the opening of this year’s first exhibition at Marabouparken konsthall: It Was What Is Will Be with the Vietnamese artist and filmmaker Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, his first solo exhibition in Sweden.
Saturday February 18 12.00-16.00, free entrance!
At 13.00 our director Helena Holmberg will hold a welcoming speech and Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn will present his films and artistic practice.
Nguyễn’s films explore the human memory and its potential as political resistance. Through thorough research Nguyễn weaves together people’s stories, documentary material, mythology and fantastical visions of the future into narratives that are as visually as emotionally appealing. The themes that Nguyễn often return to in his works are refugees, displacement and the experience of returning home to an unfamiliar place. Sound and music play an important role in his films. Many of Nguyễn’s films take place in his home country of Vietnam and neighboring areas in southeast Asia, even though they often are grounded in the Vietnam War and its aftermath the discussed themes are frightfully contemporary. The exodus from Vietnam and its neighboring countries during and after the Vietnam War was one of the first events referred to in mass media as a refugee crisis. A word that has become commonplace for us today when millions of humans are on the run from totalitarian dictatorship, war and climate change.
In the exhibition three films are shown: The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon (2022) with sculptures produced for this exhibition, The Boat People (2020) and The Island (2017). Together the three films create a temporal continuity that is referred to in the exhibitions title: that which was, that which is and what will be. All three films take place in places with strong connections to the Vietnam War.
Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn (1976) was born and works in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) but grew up in California after the family escaped the country following the Vietnam War at the end of the 1970s. Nguyễn primarily works with videoinstallations often accompanied by sculptural objects. His art revolves around the power of memory and its potential as political resistance. His practice is based on research and engagement in communities exposed to trauma due to colonialism, war and displacement. He is educated at The California Institute of the Arts and is the co-founder of the artist collective The Propeller Group. Nguyễn’s films has previously been shown at the Aichi Triennial 2022, the Berlin Biennial 2022, Manifesta 14 2022 and his work is included in permanent collections in museums as MOMA and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Welcome!
