Central Library, Foyer exhibition cases and 2nd Floor Balcony cases
BPL Presents is pleased to exhibit original works on paper by visual Artist Tammy Nguyen contained in her experimental novella, O, released this September by Brooklyn-based publisher Ugly Duckling Presse. O is a genre-defying work, equal parts visual and literary undertaking:
“From a dentist’s office in San Francisco to the caves of the Phong Nha Karst, Tammy Nguyen’s O sounds the depths of personal, mineral, and geopolitical histories of Vietnam. In this many-threaded narrative, a wind that carved mountains whistles through a young girl’s teeth. The electric green of a plastic forest glints off of glazed porcelain. The shape of a bowl becomes the mouth of a cave. What emerges is a story without a center: an anti-allegory that finds its meaning in echoes and refracted light, a book stitched together by the O woven through the work as its visual spine and sonic refrain.”
In the book, Nguyen’s richly layered drawings appear interleaved within her writing, including cutout vignettes. The book contains hand letterpress elements by the artist evoking fonts and typographical interventions of Vietnam’s colonial era, creating in form and content an evocation of cultural space which has found a singular expression.
An artist talk in the fall will accompany the exhibition, following the official release of O on September 15th, 2022 and a related event at Printed Matter.
About the Artist
Tammy Nguyen joins Lehmann Maupin; Photo by Annie Ling. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
Tammy Nguyen is a multimedia artist whose work spans painting, drawing, printmaking and book making. 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.
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, among others. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Wesleyan University and represented by Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, London.
Preview the Exhibit
