Tammy Nguyen
SOS: Irregular Patches, 2024
Arches BFK Rives paper, intaglio with drypoint etching, hand set type letterpress, marbled paper, onion paper, tissue paper, handmade paper, laser cutting, silkscreen, Xerox, inkjet printing, rubber stamping, acrylic, holographic stickers, and collage
19.75 x 27.5 inches
50.2 x 69.9 cm
Work is sold unframed. Please allow up to two weeks for order to ship.
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This work is from the second installment of Nguyen’s three-part exhibition series based on
The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri’s canonical masterpiece of Christian literature. In Nguyen’s version of
The Divine Comedy, Dante’s three epics act as a metaphor for the geopolitics of Southeast Asia during the Cold War. In her practice, Nguyen constructs narratives that explore the moral gray areas that permeate global history, probing the power language has to shape these ambiguities.
The works in Purgatorio are united in formal qualities but marked by distinct characters—from statuesque angels appropriated from Gianlorenzo Bernini sculptures, to prehistoric dinosaurs, to a host of international leaders from the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia.
In SOS: Irregular Patches, the artist combines varied techniques, including printed newspaper clippings, holographic stickers, rubber stamping, and collage. Her references include excerpts from Dante’s Purgatorio, newspaper reporting on the 1955 Bandung Conference, and various visual representations of the Grasberg Mine (a project conducted in West Iran, Indonesia from the 1930s–80s).
