Tiffany Chung, Courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum
Vietnamese-American artist Tiffany Chung is known for multimedia work that explores migration, conflict and shifting geographies in the wake of political and natural upheavals. Her art is rooted in personal history: She was born in Vietnam, experienced the war there as a child, then immigrated to the United States with her family as part of the post-1975 mass exodus from the country.
In a new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum—Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue—Chung probes the legacies of the Vietnam War and its aftermath through maps, videos and paintings that highlight the voices and stories of former Vietnamese refugees.
She begins with a fine-grained look into one person's story--that of her father, who fought for the South Vietnamese military during the war--then widens out to encompass the stories of other former refugees, and pulls out further still to show the global effects of their collective migration in the war's wake.
A centerpiece of the exhibition is a new series of video interviews with former Vietnamese refugees who live in Houston, Southern California and Northern Virginia, commissioned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
"As Vietnamese Americans living in the U.S., our narrative of the war is almost invisible," said Chung. "I'm interested in hidden stories, or histories that were erased into official records. The histories are real. They're just not there for you to see."
"Tiffany Chung questions what we know about the Vietnam War," said Sarah Newman, the museum's James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art. "She explores the malleability of memory and the foreignness of the past and questions how we understand history as much as its agreed-upon facts. Although her research illuminates previously unknown facts and stories, we come away ironically comprehending less while understanding more."
Vietnam, Past Is Prologue is on view through Sept. 2, 2019.
Chung will give the James Dicke Contemporary Artist Lecture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on May 2, 2019.