Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | Click here to join mailing list
Tammy Nguyen is a multimedia artist whose work spans painting, drawing, printmaking, and publishing. Intersecting geopolitical realities with fiction, her practice addresses lesser-known histories through a blend of myth and visual narrative.She is the founder of Passenger Pigeon Press, an independent press that joins the work of scientists, journalists, creative writers, and artists to create politically nuanced and cross-disciplinary projects.
Born in San Francisco, Nguyen received a BFA from Cooper Union in 2007. The year following, she received a Fulbright scholarship to study lacquer painting in Vietnam, where she remained and worked with a ceramics company for three years thereafter. Nguyen received an MFA from Yale in 2013 and was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill in 2014. She has exhibited at the Rubin Museum, The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre in Vietnam, and the Bronx Museum, among others.
Her work is included in the collections of Yale University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MIT Library, the Seattle Art Museum, the Walker Art Center Library, and the Museum of Modern Art Library.
[…] Tammy Nguyen spoke to us from Harlem where she was with her three month old daughter Penny. Currently, Nguyen is working on a large body of work that is being broken up into several, smaller events and shows. One of these, titled Cave Matter, is up at Hesse Flatow until December 19. This work as well as other upcoming work relate to a work she completed with Ugly Duckling Press titled Phong Nha: The Making of an American Smile. The story is about a girl born without two of her teeth and the journey to fix this birth defect. Interwoven into this are stories about the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese diaspora all related to the allegory of the cave. The work is an exploration of truth and capitalism. Nguyen is now using the text to create visual work. To hear more about this, including Nguyen’s experience visiting the Phong Nha Caves, listen to the complete interview. […]