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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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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
74 Ann Greene Kelly 2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 001
1:06pm Jan 18, 2022 Page
Active Published
75 Agency of Assets x El Clasificado 2019-12-06 2020-01-26
Meztly cover
4:32pm Dec 02, 2021 Page
Active Published
73 CURRENT:LA FOOD Public Art Triennial 2019 2019-10-05 2019-11-03
CURRENT:LA FOOD
11:04am Oct 07, 2019 Page
Active Published
67 No Wrong Holes:
Thirty Years of Nayland Blake
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica blake 5
3:57pm Oct 21, 2020 Page
Active Published
72 Sadie Barnette:
The New Eagle Creek Saloon
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica barnette 7
5:36pm Aug 26, 2020 Page
Active Published
70 Hervé Tullet: Ideal Exhibition 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
Icala96194
11:32am Dec 07, 2021 Page
Active Published
71 Worldwide Orphans: Element of Play® 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
Worldwide Orphans: Element of Play® program in Vietnam.
12:42pm Dec 07, 2021 Page
Active Published
68 Brognon-Rollin:
Maybe Some Of Us Will Change This
2019-03-17 2019-06-30
Img 8214 3
2:28pm Nov 17, 2020 Page
Active Published
63 Patty Chang:
The Wandering Lake, 2009–2017
2019-03-17 2019-08-04
Ica chang 24
3:05pm Oct 01, 2019 Page
Active Published
19 Maryam Jafri:
I Drank the Kool-Aid But I Didn’t Inhale
2019-02-10 2019-06-30
Icla2.12.19 60
4:45pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
Active Published
64 Lucas Blalock:
An Enormous Oar
2019-02-10 2019-08-04
Icla2.12.19 95
4:52pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
Active Published
62 Adrian Piper
What It’s Like, What It Is #3
2018-10-07 2019-01-06
1991 what its like 3
12:12pm Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
61 Agency of Assets:
Reality Augmented
2018-09-30 2019-01-06
Agencyofassets
1:44pm Apr 07, 2020 Page
Active Published
4 B. Wurtz:
This Has No Name
2018-09-30 2019-02-17
Wurtz install 05
4:54pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
Active Published
6 Nina Chanel Abney:
Royal Flush
2018-09-23 2019-01-20
Abney install 02
11:58am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
2 This Brush for Hire: Norm Laich & Many Other Artists 2018-06-03 2018-09-02
Brush for hire 14
9:02am Dec 06, 2021 Page
Active Published
20 sisters and brothers 2018-04-22 2018-06-17
Brothers & sisters 02
11:54am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
18 rafa esparza: de la Calle 2018-04-22 2018-07-15
Rafa esparza install 02
11:46am Aug 03, 2021 Page
Active Published
9 Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us (1974) 2018-02-04 2018-04-22
Szeeman install 10
11:49am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
8 Skip Arnold: Truffle Hunt 2018-01-28 2018-04-08
Arnold install 11
11:45am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
1 Martín Ramírez: His Life in Pictures, Another Interpretation 2017-09-09 2017-12-31
Ramirez install 02
6:55pm Apr 02, 2020 Page
Active Published
7 Abigail DeVille: No Space Hidden (Shelter) 2017-09-09 2018-01-14
Deville install 02
11:37am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
5 Sarah Cain: Now I’m going to tell you everything 2017-09-09 2018-03-11
Ica cain 2017 09 06 001
1:19pm Nov 16, 2021 Page
Active Published
11 Moshe Ninio:
Rainbow:Rug
2015-01-17 2015-04-02
1
11:39pm Sep 22, 2017 Page
Active Published
10 Brian Weil, 1979–1995:
Being in the World
2015-01-17 2015-04-18
1
11:40pm Sep 22, 2017 Page
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