passage of time

Tyler Rollins Fine Art is pleased to present passage of time, a solo exhibition by Tiffany Chung, taking place from September 12 – November 2, 2019. Chung is noted for her cartographic drawings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and theater performances that examine conflict, migration, displacement, urban progress and transformation in relation to history and cultural memory. One of Vietnam’s most respected and internationally active contemporary artists, she recently presented a major solo exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue (March-September 2019). The public is cordially invited to join the artist for the opening reception of passage of time on Thursday, September 12, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

Chung’s interest in imposed political borders and their traumatic impacts on different groups of human populations has underpinned her commitment to conducting ongoing comparative studies of forced migration. The exhibition passage of time focuses both on the recent history of conflict and displacement in Guatemala and the post-1975 mass exodus of Vietnamese refugees, of which she herself was a part. Cartographic drawings and embroideries on fabric, alongside videos and text-based works, address such issues as the international flows of refugees, the effects of government policies on local populations, and the historical background to ongoing conflicts.

Chung’s work studies the geographical shifts in countries that were traumatized by war, human destruction, or natural disaster. Her map drawings layer different periods in the history of devastated topographies, reflecting the impossibility of accurately creating cartographic representations of most places. Transgressing space and time, these works unveil the connection between imperialist ideologies and visions of modernity. Her maps interweave historical and geologic events – and spatial and sociopolitical changes – with future predictions, revealing cartography as a discipline that draws on the realms of perception and fantasy as much as geography. Exploring world geopolitics by integrating international treaties with local histories, Chung’s work re-maps memories that were denied in official records. Based on meticulous ethnographic research and archival documents, her work excavates layers of history, re-writes chronicles of places, and creates interventions into the spatial narratives produced through statecraft.

Chung was featured in the 2015 Venice Biennale, in the main exhibition, All the World’s Futures, with an installation of 40 map-based drawings relating to the ongoing crisis in Syria. The works’ richly detailed surfaces, with jewel-like tones rendered in ink and paint stick on translucent vellum, belie their somber thematic content charting the country’s ever expanding cycles of violence and refugee displacement. In 2018 she participated in the Sydney and Gwangju biennials, an overview of her multi-media work from 2010-18 was presented in New Cartographies at Asia Society Texas Center in Houston, and she presented a solo exhibition at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich. Other US museum exhibitions that have featured her work include: Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016); My Voice Would Reach You, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2014); California Pacific Triennial, Orange County Museum of Art (2013); and Six Lines of Flight, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012). She has recently shown in museum exhibitions in Austria, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. In the United States, she has presented five solo shows at Tyler Rollins Fine Art (2008, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017). She was awarded the 2013 Sharjah Biennial Prize honoring her exceptional contribution to the biennial. Public collections include SFMOMA, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Singapore Art Museum, M+, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and Queensland Art Gallery.