Tyler Rollins Fine Art is pleased to present the unwanted population (Sept. 7 – Oct. 21, 2017), a solo exhibition of new works by Tiffany Chung featuring recent developments in three of her ongoing projects: The Vietnam Exodus Project, which investigates the post-1975 mass exodus of refugees from Vietnam, of which she herself was a part; The Syria Project, which tracks the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Syria; and The Global Refugee Migration Project, which surveys the current internal displacement and mass movement of peoples around the world. Shown together for the first time, these projects comprise a comparative study of forced migration. Based in Vietnam and the USA, Chung is internationally known for her cartographic drawings and installations that examine conflict, migration, displacement, and urban transformation in relation to history and cultural memory. The richly detailed surfaces of her cartographic works, with jewel-like tones rendered in ink, acrylic, and oil on translucent vellum, belie their somber thematic content. Utilizing intensive studies of the impacts of geographical shifts and imposed political borders on different groups of human populations, her work excavates layers of history, re-writes chronicles of places, and creates interventions into the spatial and political narratives produced through statecraft.
Chung’s Syria Project was introduced in All the World’s Futures, the main exhibition of the 2015 Venice Biennale, with an installation of 40 map-based drawings charting the country’s ever expanding cycles of violence and refugee displacement. With the new works from the series included in the unwanted population, she continues to trace the effects of the colonial partitioning of the Middle East; to map areas of conflict and sites of refugee camps; and to track statistical data relating to deaths, refugees, and internally displaced persons. Confronting the current worldwide refugee crises, works from The Global Refugee Migration Project reflect on the increasing levels of human displacement due to conflict and disaster, following migration routes through Africa to Europe while accounting for the number of arrivals as well as the dead and missing. Parallel to these two projects, recent works from Chung’s ongoing Vietnam Exodus Project analyze the Vietnamese refugees’ migration trajectories and experiences, addressing asylum policies that emerged and were imposed on them. Featured in the exhibition are cartographic works drawn on paper and drafting film, or embroidered on canvas, shown alongside a multimedia wall installation that incorporates text panels, videos, and works on paper. The installation includes a series of watercolors from Chung’s Vietnam Exodus History Learning Project, in which a group of younger Saigon-based artists made works based on her own digital photocollages as well as archival photographs she selected.*
One of today’s most internationally active contemporary artists, Chung has participated in over 100 exhibitions and biennials on five continents, including: Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; IMPERMANENCIA. Mutable Art in a Materialist Society, XIII Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador; 10th Taipei Biennial, Taiwan; Still (The) Barbarians, EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial; Illumination, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Sonsbeek, Museum Arnhem, Netherlands; All The World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale, Italy; Our Land/Alien Territory, Manege Museum & Exhibition Center, Moscow, Russia; My Voice Would Reach You, Rice University & Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA; Residual: Disrupted Choreographies, Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France; Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; California Pacific Triennial, Newport Beach, USA; 7th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia; and Six Lines of Flight, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA.
*All watercolors are the result of the Vietnam Exodus History Learning Project, carried out in collaboration with Hồ Hưng, Huỳnh Bảo, Lê Nam Đy, Nguyễn Hoàng Long, Đặng Quang Tiến, Phạm Ái, Võ Châu Hoàng Vy.
