Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn

Biography

Encompassing video, sculpture and installation, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn's work explores strategies of political resistance through rituals, the making of objects (both as testimony and devotion), supernaturalism and the impact of mass media on these moments of resistance. His work also focuses on the cultural alienation of the expatriate experience.

Nguyễn’s videos and films have been shown at the 55th International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany (2009); 8th NHK Asian Film Festival, Tokyo (2007); 18th Singapore International Film Festival (2005) and 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (2005), and his work is part of the collections of the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Carré d'Art, Nîmes, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Since 2006, he has worked collaboratively with the Propeller Group, which he founded. The collective’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, US (2017); Phoenix Art Museum, US (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2016); Venice Biennale (2015); Prospect.3, New Orleans Triennial (2014); New Museum Triennial, New York (2012) and Los Angeles Biennial (2012), among others.

Nguyễn has received several awards in both film and the arts, including an Art Matters grant in 2010. The Propeller Group were awarded the Grand Prize at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland (2015) and a Creative Capital award for their video project Television Commercial for Communism. Nguyễn is also co-founder and board member of Sàn Art, an artist-initiated exhibition space and educational programme established in 2007 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

He earned a BFA from the University of California, Irvine (1999) and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Santa Clarita (2004).

He was born in 1976 in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and grew up in California. He currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.

SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 14