Hanes Visiting Artist Lecture: Tiffany Chung

Tiffany Chung is internationally noted for her exquisite cartographic drawings and installations that examine conflict, migration, displacement, urban progress and transformation in relation to history and cultural memory. Chung’s work studies the geographical shifts in countries traumatized by war, human destruction or natural disaster. Her map drawings layer different periods in the history of devastated topographies, reflecting the impossibility of accurately creating cartographic representations of most places. Transgressing space and time, these works unveil the connection between imperialist ideology and vision of modernity. Her maps interweave historical and geologic events, spatial and sociopolitical changes with future predictions, revealing cartography as a discipline that draws on the realms of perception and fantasy as much as geography. Exploring world geopolitics by incorporating international treaties with local histories, Chung’s work remaps memories denied in official records. Based on meticulous ethnographic research and archival documents, Chung’s work excavates layers of history, re-writes chronicles of places, and creates interventions into the spatial narratives produced through statecraft. Her interest in imposed political borders and their horrendous, traumatic impacts on different groups of human populations have underpinned Chung’s commitment to conducting an ongoing comparative study of forced migration through the current global refugee migration, the Syrian humanitarian crisis and the post-1975 mass exodus of the Vietnamese refugees. By unpacking the Vietnamese refugees’ experiences and tackling the asylum policy applied towards them in the past, this project aims to give insights into the impact of constant shifts in asylum policymaking on already traumatized and distressed people. Chung’s Syria Project was featured in the 2015 Venice Biennale, with 40 map-based drawings relating to the ongoing crisis in Syria presented in the main exhibition All The World’s Futures.

Tiffany Chung holds an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2000) and a BFA from California State University, Long Beach (1998). She was awarded the Sharjah Biennial Artist Prize in 2013. Chung’s upcoming museum solo exhibitions include: Tiffany Chung, Johann Jacobs Museum, Zurich, Switzerland (2018); Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue, Smithsonian American Art Museum (2019).

Selected museum exhibitions and biennials include: Imagined Borders, 12^th Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2018); Superposition-Equilibrium & Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2018); Dismantling the Scaffold, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2018); Detours, Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, Norway (2017); Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter, MoMA, New York, USA (2016); IMPERMANENCIA Mutable Art in a Materialist Society, XIII Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador (2016); 10th Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2016); Still (The) Barbarians, EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial (2016); Illumination, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; (2016); Sonsbeek, Museum Arnhem, Netherlands (2016); All The World’s Futures, 56^th Venice Biennale, Italy (2015); Our Land/Alien Territory, a special project of the 6^th Moscow Biennale, Museum & Exhibition Center ‘Manege’, Moscow, Russia (2015); I Bienal del Sur: Pueblos en Resistencia, Museo de Bellas Artes, Carascas, Venezuela (2015); My Voice Would Reach You, Rice University & Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA (2014); Residual: Disrupted Choreographies, Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nimes, France (2014); THREADS, Museum Arnhem, Arnhem, Netherlands (2014); Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE (2013); California Pacific Triennial, Newport Beach, USA (2013); Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2012); Six Lines of Flight, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA (2012); The Map as Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, USA (2012); PANORAMA, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2012); Kuandu Biennale, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan (2012); Open House, Singapore Biennale, National Museum of Singapore (2011); Roving Eye, Sorlandets Kunstmuseum, Norway (2011); Atopia: Art and City in the 21st Century, Centre de Cultura Conteporània de Barcelona, Spain (2010); The River Project, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Australia (2010); Incheon International Women Artists’ Biennale, Korea (2009); transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, USA (2008) and Arko Museum, Seoul, Korea (2007); Fukuoka Triennale, Japan (2005).

Chung’s solo exhibitions include: the unwanted population, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York (2017); between the blank space of Hitachi Factories I read poetry interwoven with tales of the barbarians, famines and war sacrifices, Kenpoku Art Festival, Hitachi City History Museum, Japan (2016); from the mountains to the valleys, from the deserts to the seas: journeys of historical uncertainty, CAMP (Center for Art on Migration Politics), Copenhagen, Denmark (2015); finding one’s shadow in ruins and rubble, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York (2015); another day another world, mc2 gallery, Milan, Italy (2014); Tiffany Chung, Lieu-Commun Espace d’Art Contemporain, Toulouse, France (2014); an archaeology project for future remembrance & the Galápagos Project: on the brink of our master plans, Galerie Quynh, HCMC, Vietnam (2013); TOMORROW ISN’T HERE, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York, USA (2012); Fukagawa Shokudo, Fukagawa Tokyo Modan Kan, Tokyo, Japan (2011); Scratching the Walls of Memory, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York (2010).

Tiffany Chung is a co-founder of Sàn Art, an independent art space in Hochiminh City, Vietnam.

An endowment established in 1983 through the generosity of Nancy and Robin Hanes supports the Art Department’s Visiting Artist Series. This important program brings both established and emerging artists to campus to discuss their work in public lectures and to offer individual critiques to our M.F.A. students.  The Hanes Visiting Artist series greatly enriches both our academic programs and our outreach to the wider community.  All lectures are free and open to the public.

Artist website: http://www.trfineart.com/artist/tiffany-chung/#artist-works

Departmental website: art.unc.edu

Contact: Sabine Gruffat, gruffat@email.unc.edu

Image credit: ICMPD, IOM Missing Migrants Project, Frontex, Reuters, NYT: migration routes through Africa to Europe, 2017, acrylic, ink and oil on drafting film, 92 x 131 cm