Description

The Fundació Joan Miró presents the first solo exhibition in Spain of Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, winner of the 8th edition of the Joan Miró Prize. The exhibition includes some of his most poignant video installations as well as a selection of his sculptures made with discarded bombs and artillery shells left over from the Vietnam War.

Nguyen was born in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in 1976, but his parents left the country during what is known as the "boat people" migration and ended up settling in the United States as refugees. That early experience is at the core of the artist's creative output and practice, especially once he resolved to move back to Vietnam.

The exhibition not only includes projects that revolve around the human and material consequences of the two Vietnam wars, led by France and the United States, but it also establishes a dialogue between Joan Miró and Alexander Calder, both proponents of Western art of the Cold War era. That dialogue is voiced by both the characters in Nguyen's films and installations, and the artworks and objects featured in these projects: Calder reincarnates in the body of a Vietnamese woman; an unexploded bomb talks of its fate as it is buried and detonated; letters written and read to estranged or deceased parents have the power to evoke and pierce family legacies.

Source: Fundació Joan Miró.