Although Tuan Andrew Nguyen is known for his video-based practice that weaves intricate storytelling with surreal visuals of daily ordinariness, his recent solo exhibition “Fight or Flight or Float or Fall” unveiled his experiments in sculpture. At the core of the show was Nguyen’s desire to experience images through shifting perspectives: a hanging mobile made from artillery shells unearthed from central Vietnam, layered pictures of three astronauts painted on fluttering bamboo curtains that evoke the Cold War–era space race, a brass dragonfly perched delicately on a base made from unidentified ordnance. These kinetic sculptures not only harbor complex layers of histories that still haunt present-day Vietnam, but also provide a fresh perspective on how found material can be reincarnated into “moving images.”
The bamboo curtain is a common household item in Vietnam and coincidentally a Cold War metaphor for the ideological demarcation between capitalist and Communist states in Asia. Nguyen transformed the curtain into sculptural material that disintegrates images and disrupts historical layers. Suspended from the ceiling, the cuboid Pierced (all works 2024) consisted of thirty-seven layers of enamel-painted curtains that viewers could walk through. Entering from one end, we see a tranquil-blue facade; from the other, a nuclear-orange orb floating on the horizon: an explosion. As one spread the curtains and pierced the cube, the bamboo cylinders began to flutter and vibrate, temporarily unsettling the image of the atomic blast.
This rupture of historical narratives through destabilized images continued in another ensemble of works, in each of which a pseudo-painting was created from three layers of curtain. Bang superimposes the famous bullet-through-apple photograph by Harold Edgerton—whose firm also documented nuclear explosions for the US Atomic Energy Commission—on an image of the Earth and one of a mushroom cloud. Frontier collapses the portraits of three astronauts, one each from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. As the bamboo curtains moved, the images emblematic of the Cold War shifted and lost their legibility, suggesting potential interstices for dissonant microhistories and perhaps even geopolitical paradigm shifts—testifying to the malleability of history. While dominant discourses on Cold War events such as the space race have largely adhered to a USA-versus-USSR duality, Nguyen’s insertion of the Vietnamese astronaut Pha˙m Tuân subtly unsettled this binary, expressing the unspoken aspirations of sidelined nations while still gesturing toward their complicated involvements with key powers.
Invested in the disruptive potential of mundane objects, Nguyen is also enraptured with the idea of material reincarnation, particularly in the case of unexploded ordnance (UXO), which can remain dangerous for decades. Having collaborated with UXO-removal NGOs who work in Vietnam’s Quảng Tri˙ province, one of the most heavily bombed places in the world, Nguyen gathered artillery shells to recast into sculpture, releasing these destructive munitions from their violent past. For instance, he pounded and carved brass shells into dragonflies, finely balanced above a brass shell base. Conjuring the innocent form of a popular tourist souvenir, Nguyen contradicts the physical and historical weight of his material, allowing viewers to engage with the works as if they were toys. Extending this trajectory of functional transformation, 57MM #4 – Untitled imbues a bombshell with healing aesthetics, turning it into a wind chime sanded down to yield a sound whose frequency is 685.76 HZ—a soothing vibration that has been incorporated into the treatment of war veterans suffering from PTSD. Shaped like a Calderesque hanging mobile, with brass disks also made from UXO, the bell sang Nguyen’s hope for psychological reparation for war, as its therapeutic sonics reverberated across the exhibition space.
