CONFUSION TECHNIQUE

The sculpture, prints and photographs on view are constellations of history as hypnosis, Alison Nguyen’s film of the same title. The front of the gallery reveals elements of Nguyen’s process and research which overlap with the production of the work. We see a cigarette case found in the glove compartment of a Seville she severed in half for a sculpture, the inside of which is lined with unsettling news clippings of American violence in Vietnam.

 

The readymade sculpture is surrounded Nguyen’s confounding filming process images; an image transfer of J.F.K.’s presidential limousine; a silkscreen print of her brother Matthew Nguyen’s poem “Cu”; and a rephotographed image of the artist, her mother, and an older family member U Noui who immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1978. U Noui dyed her teeth black – a cosmetic ritual in Vietnam – and kept them as such in the U.S.