Tyler Rollins Fine Art is pleased to present finding one’s shadow in ruins and rubble, a solo exhibition of new works by Tiffany Chung. One of Vietnam’s most prominent and internationally active contemporary artists, Chung is currently presenting her Syria Project in the Venice Biennale as part of the exhibition All the World’s Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor (May 9 – Nov. 22, 2015). Opening on April 16, finding one’s shadow in ruins and rubble marks her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, and features multi-media works relating to the lingering effects of three natural and manmade disasters: the 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe, Japan; the current conflict in Syria; and the battlefields of the Vietnam War. These separate yet intertwined components reflect the artist’s long-term research into geographical shifts in countries that were traumatized by war, human destruction, or natural disaster, with a particular focus on the growth, decline, or disappearance of towns and cities, and related issues of urban development, environmental catastrophe, and humanitarian crisis.
The exhibition features work perhaps the most explicitly linked to the artist’s biography, or rather, that of her father, a former pilot for the South Vietnamese Air Force. Archival fragments relating to his wartime experiences are juxtaposed with Chung’s current investigations of disused and ruined airstrips scattered about southern Vietnam. Chung’s project relating to the massive destruction in Kobe, Japan, a country in which she has worked extensively for many years, is also informed by the notion of contemporary ruins, as related through archival video and photography as well as her characteristic map drawings. These meticulously detailed works involve a complex layering of topographies from different historical periods, interweaving historical and geologic events, as well as spatial and sociopolitical changes, with future predictions and utopian visions. The exhibition also incorporates elements from Chung’s ongoing research into the current civil war in Syria, with its enormous urban destruction and spiraling refugee crisis. She presents a new installation of light boxes, arranged like a chaotic cityscape, showing haunting images of the contemporary ruins of the Syrian city Homs, a poignant meditation on loss and shattered polity.
Based in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Chung holds an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2000) and a BFA from California State University, Long Beach (1998). She was awarded the Sharjah Biennial Artist Prize in 2013. Selected museum exhibitions and biennials include: My Voice Would Reach You, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2014); Residual: Disrupted Choreographies, Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France (2014); THREADS, Museum Arnhem, Netherlands (2014); California Pacific Triennial, Newport Beach (2013); Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2012); Six Lines of Flight, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012); The Map as Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2012); PANORAMA, Singapore Art Museum (2012); Kuandu Biennale, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan (2012); Singapore Biennale (2011); Roving Eye, Sorlandets Kunstmuseum, Norway (2011); Atopia: Art and City in the 21st Century, Centre de Cultura Conteporània de Barcelona, Spain (2010); The River Project, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Australia (2010); Incheon International Women Artists’ Biennale, Korea (2009); transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2008) and Arko Museum, Seoul, Korea (2007); Fukuoka Triennale, Japan (2005). Chung’s solo exhibitions include: Tiffany Chung, Lieu-Commun, Toulouse, France (2014); Fukagawa Shokudo, Fukagawa Tokyo Modan Kan, Tokyo, Japan (2011); and at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, TOMORROW ISN’T HERE (2012), scratching the walls of memory (2010) and Play (2008).
