Tuan Andrew Nguyen at Frieze New York

For the 2025 edition of Frieze New York, James Cohan will present new sculptural work by Tuan Andrew Nguyen. 

Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s work explores the power of storytelling through video and sculpture. His projects are based on extensive research and community engagement, weaving collaboratively crafted narratives and materially transformative objects that propose speculative futures. 

The three sculptures on view at Frieze New York are crafted from fragments of unexploded ordinances, salvaged in Quảng Trị region of central Vietnam. The works are shaped by Nguyen’s belief in the possibility of material reincarnation: of reconfiguring objects of war into spiritual objects capable of healing. These mobiles, which take compositional cues from the work of Alexander Calder, juxtapose an elegance of form with the brutal origins of the material used to craft them. The works move with the flow of air and vibrations of sound in the gallery space, creating a naturally shifting play of abstract spatial relationships, and suggesting a state of perpetual change. As they oscillate and shimmer, these sculptures embody the principle of balance–both formally in their construction, and conceptually in terms of the karmic balance embedded within the idea of reincarnation. Nguyen worked with a sound healer who tuned each work so that once activated, it vibrates at a precisely calibrated healing frequency. Several of the sculptural works can be activated by a booth attendant, inviting the creation of a curative soundscape. 

Nguyen's video and sculptural works explore the transformative possibilities of material animism and reincarnation. These concepts also evidence the resilience of communities working through trauma, offering a generative space to construct futures based on embodied notions of building and rebuilding.