Tuan Andrew Nguyen

James Cohan is pleased to present A Lotus in a Sea of Fire, an exhibition of new work by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, on view from February 28 through July 2 at 291 Grand Street. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with James Cohan. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Friday, February 28 from 6-8 PM. Nguyen will be in conversation with Christopher Myers at the gallery on Sunday, March 1 at 3 PM. 

To explore the exhibition in our online Viewing Room, please click here. 

Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s work explores the power of storytelling through video and sculpture. His projects are based on extensive research and community engagement, tapping into inherited histories and counter-memory. Nguyen extracts and re-works dominant, oftentimes colonial histories and supernaturalisms into imaginative vignettes. Fact and fiction are interwoven in poetic narratives that span time and place.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is The Boat People, a single channel video installation displayed alongside hand-carved wooden sculptural objects. Set in an unspecified post-apocalyptic future at the precarious edge of humanity’s possible extinction, the film follows a band of children led by a strong-willed and resourceful little girl. Calling themselves The Boat People, they travel the seas and collect the stories of a world they never knew through objects that survived over time.