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Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Artist Residency
    • Bookshelf Residency
    • Digital Projects
    • Public Programs
    • Schools & Community
    • Special Projects
  • Visit
  • About
    • Staff
    • Governance
    • Press
    • Partnerships
    • Opportunities
    • Annual Report
  • Shop
  • Get Involved
    • Incognito
    • Patron Groups
    • Institutional Support
    • Artist Edition Series
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
  • Donate
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Back To Exhibitions
June 10
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September 10
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June 10
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September 10

Trương Công Tùng

Project Room
Tct 1
Trương Công Tùng, _the state of absence–voices from outside, 2020–ongoing. Gourds, water, soil, seeds, machinery, time, and temperature, installation dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist. Commissioned by Carnegie Museum of Art for the 58th Carnegie International

Drawing upon mystical ritual and indigenous mythologies, the work of Trương Công Tùng (b. 1986, Đắk Lắk province, Vietnam) is characterized by a poetic sensitivity to history, landscape, and materiality. His dynamic installations often incorporate natural materials that bear the traces of time and the echoes of generations and are composed in such a way as to reimagine the land from a site of colonial empire to one of communion. Disrupting the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds, Trương’s practice reconfigures elements of each to reframe the relationship between the living and the inanimate.

Trương’s first museum solo exhibition brings together a constellation of sculptural and video works produced over the last three years. At the gallery entrance is a curtain of wooden beads made from a combination of coffee, cashew, and forest trees, all of which have been exploited throughout the artist’s homeland in the Central Highlands of Vietnam due to the relentless forces of war and industrialization. Created in homage to the dislocated, extracted, and disappeared, the network of suspended beads invites visitors to reflect on their own connections to these complex histories of people and place. Also on view is an installation made from gourds, water, soil, and seeds. The gourds are joined by a web of clear plastic tubes through which flowing water and earth create an undercurrent of migration from one gourd to the next. Each is sealed with a glossy finish made using lacquer, a once-prized and heavily traded material that is derived from tree sap. In the lacquerware painting tradition, lacquer is added to an object’s surface and then polished to reveal the hidden layers beneath. For the artist, this unearthing is a sacred act.

Reminiscent of the forest depths with its darkness, shadows, and gentle hums of insects and other life, Trương Công Tùng’s living exhibition requires ongoing cultivation and care, allowing it to become a metaphor for, and a journey of, co-existence and transformation.

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Installation view, Trương Công Tùng, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, June 10–September 10, 2023. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
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Exhibition Guide (Vietnamese)
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August 03, 2023
Trương Cong Tung Sees History in a Gourd
Trương Công Tùng is organized by Amanda Sroka, Senior Curator, with Caroline Ellen Liou, Curatorial Assistant.
Trương Công Tùng (b. 1986, Đắk Lắk province; lives in Ho Chi Minh City) grew up in Đắk Lắk province among various ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. He graduated from Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2010, majoring in lacquer painting. With research interests in science, cosmology, philosophy, and the environment, he works with a range of media, including video, installation, painting, and found objects, which reflect personal contemplations on the cultural and geopolitical shifts of modernization, as embodied in the morphing mythology of a land. He is also a member of Art Labor (founded in 2012), a collective working between visual art and social/life sciences to produce alternative nonformal knowledge via artistic and cultural activities in various public contexts and locales. Trương’s has exhibited extensively in Vietnam and abroad, both as a solo artist and as part of Art Labor. Recent exhibitions have been held at institutions including the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022); Manzi Art Space, Hanoi, Vietnam (2021); San Art, Ho Chi Minh City; Galerie Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City (2018); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018); Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2018); Kadist, San Francisco (2016); Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi (2016); and the Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2016). He is also the recipient of the inaugural Han Nefkens Foundation—Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant 2023, in collaboration with Sàn Art, Vietnam; Sa Sa Art Projects, Cambodia; the Jim Thompson Art Center, Thailand; Museion, Italy; Busan Museum of Art, South Korea and Prameya Art Foundation, India.

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Last updated at Wednesday, 13 Sep 2023 1:34 PM, by Asuka Hisa Log in
Database Exhibitions
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STATUS ID Title Start date End date Featured image Last updated
Active Published
133 Scratching at the Moon 2024-02-10 2024-05-12
Na Mira, <i>TETRAPHOBIA</i>, 2022, installation view, <i>Subrosa</i>, MOCA Tucson, 2023. Photograph by Maya Hawk, copyright © MOCA Tucson, 2023
10:15am Aug 28, 2023 Page
Active Published
132 Barbara T. Smith: Proof 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Smith proof 1965 66
1:10pm Oct 03, 2023 Page
Active Published
134 Infinite Rehearsal with Chris Emile and No)one. Art House 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Infinite rehearsal website shot
1:12pm Oct 03, 2023 Page
Active Published
135 Data (beta): the labor of looking 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Annex installation 2023 aoa
4:35pm Sep 27, 2023 Page
Active Published
129 Trương Công Tùng 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
Tct 1
1:34pm Sep 13, 2023 Page
Active Published
130 Carmen Argote: I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
Icala 2023 06 12 042
2:40pm Aug 17, 2023 Page
Active Published
131 Alberta Whittle: between a whisper and a cry 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
Aw 1
10:44am Jul 29, 2023 Page
Active Published
126 Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
Icala 2023 02 14 039
10:40am May 09, 2023 Page
Active Published
127 Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
Icala 001
1:14pm May 04, 2023 Page
Active Published
128 Christine Sun Kim: Bounce Back 2023-02-11 2024-01-14
Icala 2023 02 14 001
1:32pm Aug 21, 2023 Page
Active Published
91 Rebecca Morris: 2001–2022 2022-10-01 2023-01-15
Image of exhibition introduction text, Rebecca Morris painting hands in the background.
12:32pm Nov 16, 2022 Page
Active Published
92 My Barbarian 2022-10-01 2023-01-15
Icala 2022 10 06 004
4:57pm Nov 08, 2022 Page
Active Published
90 The Condition of Being Addressable 2022-06-18 2022-09-04
Icala 06.20.220449 edit
12:07pm Aug 04, 2022 Page
Active Published
125 Aquelarre no binario / Non-binary coven 2022-06-08 2023-01-15
View of ICA LA courtyard mural by Ad Minoliti featuring four vertical panels, each filled with abstracted representations of figures in vivid reds, yellows, oranges, purples, and pinks.
9:13pm Jan 19, 2023 Page
Active Published
87 Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning 2022-02-05 2022-05-29
Installation view, "Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning," Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 5–May 29, 2022. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
12:18pm Jul 06, 2022 Page
Active Published
88 Sara Cwynar: Apple Red/Grass Green/Sky Blue 2022-02-05 2022-05-29
Sara Cwynar, "Glass Life," 2021. Six channel 2K video with sound, TRT: 19:02 min. Courtesy the artist; The Approach, London; Cooper Cole, Toronto; and Foxy Production, New York. Installation view, "Sara Cwynar: Apple Red/Grass Green/Sky Blue," Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 5–May 29, 2022. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
5:53pm May 03, 2022 Page
Active Published
83 Witch Hunt 2021-10-10 2022-01-09
Installation view of Witch Hunt, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, October 10–January 9, 2022.
11:51am Apr 01, 2022 Page
Active Published
89 Minerva Cuevas: Female Earth 2021-10-10 2022-06-02
Icala witchhunt 2021 10 12 077 (1)
10:47am May 24, 2022 Page
Active Published
81 Queer Communion:
Ron Athey
2021-06-19 2021-09-05
Icala 2021 07 02 009
10:15pm Sep 01, 2021 Page
Active Published
82 Kenneth Tam:
Silent Spikes
2021-06-19 2021-09-05
Icala 2021 07 02 002
11:12am Aug 03, 2021 Page
Active Published
80 The Inconstant World 2021-03-06 2021-05-30
Tiw horvitz
9:42am Dec 22, 2021 Page
Active Published
79 Online Screening: Stanya Kahn’s No Go Backs and Earlier Works 2020-12-09 2021-01-10
Sk1b
4:13pm Jan 22, 2021 Page
Active Published
77 Harold Mendez:
Let us gather in a flourishing way
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Icala 2020 10 05 014
3:17pm Feb 07, 2022 Page
Active Published
78 Stanya Kahn:
No Go Backs
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Sk1a
6:46pm Dec 04, 2020 Page
Active Published
69 Ree Morton:
The Plant That Heals May Also Poison
2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 025
1:06pm Jan 18, 2022 Page
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