Now Open: Greater Toronto Art 2024, March 22–July 28.

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn

The Boat People

November 1, 2021
–November 30, 2021

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, The Boat People, 2020. Single-channel video, 4k, Super 16mm transferred to digital, color, 5.1 surround sound. 19′46″. Courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York.

Set at the precarious edge of humanity’s possible extinction, The Boat People follows a group of children who travel the seas and collect the stories of a world they never knew through objects that survived through time. Arriving in a coastal region formerly known as Bataan, they come into contact with the rich layers of intermingled histories and eras embedded in the land and water. They encounter objects from a refugee crisis, a world war, and some of the earliest migrations in human history. Conversing with, replicating and burning these remnants of material culture, they navigate political and spiritual forms of release of the spectres they encounter.

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn is an artist working in video and sculpture. His practice explores strategies of political resistance by re-working historical, fictional and supernatural narratives. Nguyễn is a founding member of The Propeller Group, a cross-disciplinary platform for collective thinking and coordinated action.

Past Shift Key Programmes

A still from Cecilia Vicuña "Paracas" (1983)
Cecilia Vicuña
Paracas
A Still from Cauleen Smith "Pilgrim" (2017)
Cauleen Smith
Pilgrim
Mona Hatoum
Roadworks
Aura Satz
Preemptive Listening (Part 1: The Fork in the Road)