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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231101T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231216T180000
DTSTAMP:20260502T101633
CREATED:20230815T194251Z
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SUMMARY:One Day We’ll Go Home featuring Tiffany Chung\, Brandon Tho Harris\, Tuan Andrew Nguyen\, Patricia Nguyen and Julian Saporiti.
DESCRIPTION:Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Vietnamese\, b. 1976)\, The Boat People\, 2020\, Single-channel video\, 4k\, Super 16mm transferred to digital\, color\, 5.1 surround sound\, 20 mins\, Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs\, (JCG11340)\, © Tuan Andrew Nguyen 2021. Image courtesy the artist and James Cohan\, New York\n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary\, Emerson College’s platform for visual art\, proudly presents One Day We’ll Go Home\, a group exhibition featuring recent work by five Vietnamese American artists Tiffany Chung\, Brandon Tho Harris\, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn\, Patricia Nguyễn\, and Julian Saporiti who each critique the established historical narratives of the wars in Vietnam\, colonialism\, dislocation\, and their long-lasting aftermath.  \n\n\n\nOn view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street\, November 1 – December 16\, 2023. Free and open to the public\, Tuesday – Saturday from 12-6pm. Opening Reception\, Friday\, November 3\, 5-7:30PM. \n\n\n\nThe end of the Vietnam War and the sudden U.S. military evacuations in 1975 marked the beginning of large-scale exodus of citizens of Vietnam. The U.S. government evacuated approximately 125\,000 Vietnamese that year\, most of whom were likely to be persecuted by the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam government. Through video\, archival footage\, performance\, song\, and innovative storytelling\, these five artists examine and expand recent histories\, both personal and collective\, as they address multigenerational trauma and loss. The exhibition highlights the complexities surrounding the concept of homeland for Vietnamese refugees and their children and the familiar feeling of liminality that many refugees experience across the globe.  \n\n\n\nView exhibition documentation. \n\n\n\n“It is my hope that through the stories these artists tell\, we gain a deeper understanding of what happened in Vietnam and how these events continue to impact millions of people to this day\,” said Dr. Leonie Bradbury\, Emerson College’s Distinguished Curator-in-Residence. “Although this exhibition is focused on the Vietnamese diaspora and the impact of the historic events of 1975 and beyond\, sadly this topic has renewed relevance today as many refugee crises are happening concurrently across the globe.” The exhibition is curated by Dr. Leonie Bradbury\, Distinguished Curator-in-Residence\, with accompanying exhibition wall texts by Dr. Catherine H. Nguyen\, Assistant Professor of Asian Diasporic Literatures. This exhibition and related programming is supported by the Department of Writing\, Literature & Publishing\, Emerson College School of the Arts\, and the Harvard University Asia Center. \n\n\n\nPUBLIC PROGRAMMING \n\n\n\nWHAT: Music Video workshop with Julian Saporiti WHEN: Friday\, November 3\, 2023. 10:00-12:30PM WHERE: Emerson College\, Ansin Building\, Room 605\, 180 Tremont Street\, Boston\, MA Free\, but registration is required. RSVP here. \n\n\n\nArtist Talk with Tuan Andrew Nguyen\, Friday\, November 3\, 2023. doors open at 3:30PM\, 4-5:00PM.  Emerson College\, Walker Building\, Room 202\, 120 Boylston Street\, Boston\, MA. Free\, but registration is required. RSVP here. This program is supported in part by the Harvard University Asia Center \n\n\n\nOpening Reception\, One Day We’ll Go Home WHEN: Friday\, November 3\, 2023\, 5-7:30PM WHERE: Media Art Gallery\, 25 Avery Street\, Boston\, MA. \n\n\n\nLive Concert with Julian Saporiti. Experience a multimedia musical performance from No-No Boy (singer Julian Saporiti) as part of the tour for his latest album Empire Electric. This newest release brings Asian American history to life through a uniquely inventive approach to storytelling. WHEN: Saturday\, November 4\, 2023\, 6:00-7:30PM. WHERE: Pao Arts Center\, 99 Albany Street\, Boston\, MA\, 02111.This program is organized by the PAO Art Center and supported by Emerson Contemporary. \n\n\n\nLive Performance\, Passage (2023) by Patricia Nguyễn and Fiona. A work of experimental sound and movement\, Passage explores how beauty and creativity emerge in the aftermath of war. The artists meditate upon the various thresholds and movements that happen for displaced peoples across the time and space of memory\, everyday encounters of state violence\, forced migration\, and queer worldmaking.  Tuesday\, November 14\, 2023\, 5-6:30PM\, Media Art Gallery \n\n\n\nVietnam and Diasporic Aesthetics: Two Meditations. A conversation with Dr. Howie J. Tam & Dr. Catherine H. Nguyen. The first event in the Writing\, Literature & Publishing Scholar Series\, this program is presented in conjunction with One Day We’ll Go Home and supported in part by the Harvard University Asia Center. Taking as a point of departure some works of Vietnamese American artistic production both in the gallery space and beyond\, this two-part talk with Catherine H. Nguyen (Emerson College) and Howie Tam (Brandeis University) explores different approaches of receiving and encountering artworks and engages diasporic aesthetics that grapples with the legacy of the Vietnam War and its enduring questions about creation and memory. Wednesday\, December 6\, 2023\, 5-6:30PM. Media Art Gallery\, 25 Avery St. Boston\, MAThis program is supported by Department of Writing\, Literature & Publishing\, Scholar Series\, Southeast Asia Programs\, Harvard University Asia Center and Emerson Contemporary \n\n\n\n.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/one-day-well-go-home/
LOCATION:Media Art Gallery
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231211T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231215T180000
DTSTAMP:20260502T101633
CREATED:20231209T143312Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231211T032121Z
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SUMMARY:PURPOSEFULLY LOST
DESCRIPTION:Presenting the Fall 2023 Photography Practicum: Purposefully Lost\, a varied collection of reflections and expressions by Emerson artists in the BFA program.  \n\n\n\nFeaturing exhibits by the following resident artists:Aquaholic by Kyra Badger \n\n\n\nUrban Eden by Molly Berard \n\n\n\nShit Show by Maya Bergman \n\n\n\nStarring… by Charlene Cheung \n\n\n\nCardboard Reality by Jose Benito Guevera \n\n\n\nConcurrent by Yangyang Huang \n\n\n\nSecond Spine by Yiyi Lu \n\n\n\nDouble Take by Xiaoke Ma \n\n\n\nempathic fluorescence by Mia Moore \n\n\n\nDeinstitutionalised by Julia Tweedie  \n\n\n\nTraces Echo by Yuchun (Emily) Zhou
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/purposefully-lost-photos/
LOCATION:Huret & Spector Gallery; Tufte Building
CATEGORIES:Exhibition,Student Projects
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231212T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231212T170000
DTSTAMP:20260502T101633
CREATED:20231212T214412Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240214T151157Z
UID:10000064-1702368000-1702400400@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Patricia Nguyễn discusses moving through memory in performance art
DESCRIPTION:Patricia Nguyễn performs “Passage” at the Media Art Gallery.\n\n\n\nBy Maddie Browning \n\n\n\nPatricia Nguyễn is an artist\, scholar\, and educator with work surrounding the aftermath of the Vietnam War and memory\, loss\, and healing. She utilizes performance art to understand how the feeling of water and land on her body reflect the emotions and experiences of Vietnamese refugees.  \n\n\n\nHer work is a part of Emerson Contemporary’s “One Day We’ll Go Home” exhibition running through December 16. \n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary connected with Nguyễn via Zoom to discuss her journey developing performance art\, her conversations with refugees and their families\, and what she hopes people learn from her art.  \n\n\n\nEC: When did you start developing performance art? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: I was trained in devised theater throughout elementary school\, and then in high school\, I did performance poetry and spoken word. It wasn’t until I went to Vietnam in 2010\, and I encountered state surveillance and censorship [that] it transformed my work in performance poetry and theater into performance art to think about the power of how the body can help tell the story and what the body remembers.  \n\n\n\nEC: What artists are you inspired by? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: [Okwui Okpokwasili]. She did this amazing piece called “Bronx Gothic.” A lot of the people that inspired my work are Black feminists and women of color\, feminists\, artists\, poets\, theater makers.  \n\n\n\nThe person that trained me is the first woman performance artist in Vietnam\, and her name is Ly Hoàng Ly\, who I have this lifetime performance with called “Memory vs. Memory.” She really helped me understand what performance art is and what it can do through collaborating with her. “Memory vs. Memory” began because both of our fathers were located on opposing sides of the Vietnam War. We’re their children\, their daughters\, and we inherit the memories that they’ve had to go through in particular because they’re the same age on opposing sides of the war and were both incarcerated after the end of the war – her father in an old French colonial prison\, my father in the jungles near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. So\, for us\, delving into performance art\, delving into the cultural memory of specific objects like water or soil or metal\, conjures these memories that are linked to our own fathers’ histories of revolution and war and incarceration.  \n\n\n\nEC: You say in your artist statement that land and water are crucial to your process. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about that.  \n\n\n\nNguyễn: So the word for homeland\, country\, and nation in Vietnamese is “Đất nước\,” which respectively means land and water\, but in the diaspora land drops off\, so the shorthand for saying homeland or country is “nước” or just water. So a lot of my work delves into the materiality of water itself\, like\, how does water soak into my body? How do I understand the porousness of my own skin? And how do we tap into both the internal waters that we already have and the external waters that I play with in performance when I drown myself in water\, soak my myself with drenched fabric. How does that evoke the memory both within and external to me about whatever question I’m meditating on in relationship to the aftermath of the Vietnam War?  \n\n\n\nA lot of Vietnamese were forced to migrate by boat and over water\, so a lot of them are known as boat refugees. I think about the materiality of water not just as a landscape of where forced migration happens\, but as this place of life and death. I’ve interviewed so many different Vietnamese refugees\, and all of them have said\, “I was so thirsty on that boat\, and there was water all around me and I couldn’t drink any of it.” The ocean is made up of saltwater\, and saltwater could help you if you have a sore throat – you can gargle it – but if the ratio of saltwater is too much\, it becomes toxic. So what is this line between what is healing and what is toxic? So really thinking about water\, not only as a metaphor\, but literally what does it do to the body?  \n\n\n\nAnd then land\, so my father was incarcerated on former US military bases that had landmines in them. So land was literally weaponized against the Vietnamese people\, both by the US government\, and also in the aftermath of war as people who were drafted in the south of Vietnam that were aligned with the US also were incarcerated on these very lands. The precarity of life and death is contingent on if the bomb will explode.  \n\n\n\nEC: Going back to you talking about how you have interviewed a lot of refugees\, how do you approach people that are hurting and tell their stories? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: So for refugees\, they have to prove what they’ve been through to even gain refugee status. So the process of conducting oral histories is hopefully more of a reparative act\, where it’s not just like\, “Let me extract your story to see if you qualify for this paperwork or the status for particular rights and privileges.” It’s like\, “Let me actually listen and ask you your story.” The way that I conduct oral histories\, it’s based off of a relationship that I’ve already had with people\, so either I’ve known them for quite some time\, so they can trust me with their stories\, or I’m introduced to them by someone who they already trust and that person is either in the room with me or has done a lot of the prep work to help support that person. So it’s always based in rapport and consent.  \n\n\n\nIt’s really just being as present as possible and doing deep listening and gauging what people are comfortable with and what people are not comfortable with. At the end of the interview\, I always check in with them\, making sure that they’re okay\, asking them if there’s anything else they want to share. And I ask I leave them with a hopeful question like\, “What do you hope for yourself or your children or future generations?” or “What do you want to leave us with and what do you want us to learn?” so that it’s not a line of questions that focus on trauma or pain. It’s more of a line of questions and invitations to share and understand these histories with one another. I try to help those that I’m interviewing feel empowered after the interview that their story is important and what they went through was significant and that they’re not alone. \n\n\n\nEC: You received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2010 to work in Vietnam and co-founded Cây\, “the first life skills and art therapy reintegration program for human trafficking survivors along the border regions of Vietnam\,” according to your website. Tell me more about the program and why you created it. \n\n\n\nNguyễn: So originally\, I was supposed to go to Vietnam or Cambodia to work with survivors of sex trafficking and human trafficking. But the Vietnamese and Cambodian government shut down the organization that I was going to work with a week before my application was due. Luckily\, my friend worked in Vietnam and works with an anti-human trafficking organization and brought me on to it.  \n\n\n\nI had a lot of pushback going back to Vietnam from my own family. They were like\, “We escaped from there. Why would you go back?” For me\, it was really important to see the other side of war and to see those that are still impacted by its aftermath\, even if not in the way that we understand how people are directly impacted\, but just in terms of the new neoliberal development policies and how that impacts indigenous folks who are also known as ethnic minorities. I wanted to see how development is impacting those who live in poor and rural areas\, and who are being heard and neglected by the government and to work on young women’s empowerment through the arts. So I co-founded that program with my friend who was also interested in arts education\, and we were interested in exploring how arts can be this tool to support people to express themselves and make sense of the conditions that they’re living in and feel like they can build community around that because art is the first thing that was used for the war in terms of propaganda and gaining public support\, but it’s also the thing that is most censored and most surveilled.  \n\n\n\nEC: At Emerson\, you performed “Passage” on November 14. What story were you telling through that performance? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: There was this beautiful photo that I had seen of a Vietnamese woman with her conical hat\, and she was surrounded by all these beautiful green fishing nets\, and she just loved her\, so that’s what inspired the material that I worked with. I worked with different color tulle that evoked the water itself\, and the water at different depths. I played with different colors of tulle to show the different dimensions and layers of water. In thinking about the creation of “Passage\,” when you walk through the gallery space\, you first walk into Tiffany Chung’s piece\, and her piece is really about the forced migration right after the war. And then in the middle\, you have Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s installation video\, “[The] Boat People” where they land on this refugee camp\, so it’s from the journey of leaving to the refugee camp\, and then my three channel installation is at the far end of the gallery\, and it’s really challenging the notion of refugee resettlement. So it’s kind of like if you move through the gallery\, that’s the story that I saw\, from departure to this liminal space of the refugee camp\, to this place of resettlement.  \n\n\n\nSo in the middle of the gallery space\, I wanted to imagine that it was all water\, and the tulle evoked that sense of water. So I started the performance in the middle of Tiffany’s installation. And part of what I did was\, I sunk into all this tulle that was surrounding me to be with the material\, meditate with her piece\, and have it be infused into my performance work. And then I carry the tulle into the main gallery space\, and part of carrying the tulle is imagining\, “What does it mean to literally try to carry water?” And it’s spilling over\, it cannot be contained in any way. Then I dive into the tulle\, and I’m wrestling in the midst of it\, trying to explore my breath\, trying to explore tension\, trying to explore moments of feeling like I’m swimming or floating or drowning or shifting and just thinking about what the space could be. And meanwhile what’s being projected onto me from the projector above are these incremental numbers that are going up and down in different ways to symbolize the number of growing refugees that are left to die at sea or abandoned by nation states or government.  \n\n\n\nSo that’s being projected on my body as I’m moving under and with and through the tulle and exploring expansion and contraction and breath and thinking about the bodies that were forced to migrate by sea and those that drowned or were thrown overboard or couldn’t make it. What does it mean to dive deep into the ocean where these bodies have landed? So then I struggle to get out of the tulle and go back in because the answer isn’t resettlement. The answer isn’t\, “Let me arrive at some place\, and it’ll save me. Let me get out of the water.” It was really thinking about\, “Let’s return to the water\,” and “What can the water teach us\, and how can we build other worlds and imaginaries through the water?” And then I worked with Fiona Fiona Ngô who created a really beautiful experimental sound piece that really framed the performance and was a call in response to the piece. \n\n\n\nEC: Your Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow for New Americans bio states that growing up your parents told you stories about their experience escaping Vietnam during the war as boat refugees to Malaysia and Indonesia and resettling in the United States in the ‘80s. How do those stories inform your work? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: They deeply inform my work in that they are the ones that I’m theorizing with. They helped me understand the political stakes of war in how they’ve survived and how they don’t want that to happen to anyone else in any capacity. So I draw on their stories to create my performance gestures\, and I draw on their stories and their legacies to think about\, “What is the purpose of this work?” and really thinking about how it’s to connect with audiences to share these histories and these stories. That’s how they want their stories to be passed on. \n\n\n\nEC: What do you hope people learn from experience in your art? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: I hope it offers a space for people to grieve and to mourn\, especially as we’re witnessing different levels of violence all the time. I want people to understand that war and the process of nation building always results in forced migration\, always results in the predetermination of who gets to live and who gets to die or who has to die for someone else to live. I want people to learn the human stakes of what it means to delve into these histories\, not only just as something that’s happened in the past\, but as a lens to think about the future\, as a way to think about how we can build a better world by not forgetting and erasing the violences and the ugly histories and the heartbreaks of the past. How do we acknowledge them and also transform them so that we can build a better world\, a better future for all of us and other generations to come? \n\n\n\nThis interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/patricia-nguyen-discusses-moving-through-memory-in-performance-art/
CATEGORIES:Artist Spotlight,Artist Talk,News
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