Thuy Tien Nguyen Explores Memory and Familiar Objects in New Exhibition

Artist Thuy Tien Nguyen is set to challenge perceptions of memory and familiarity with her upcoming exhibition, “Press, Release,” opening at Gasworks in South London on July 9th, 2026. The exhibition, which runs until September 13th, 2026, marks the Hanoi- and Frankfurt-based artist’s first solo show in the UK and delves into the complex ways personal and collective memories are carried and transformed through ordinary objects.

A Skeletal Conveyor Belt

Central to the exhibition is a skeletal conveyor belt, crafted from modular polished steel and salvaged wood fragments, which will weave through two gallery spaces. This mechanical element, reminiscent of factory or airport infrastructure, will transport Vietnamese, Thai, and British vernacular objects along a carefully choreographed path. However, the smooth, logical aesthetic of the steel frame is deliberately unsettled by the rhythm of the belt. Objects will be seen to shudder, move forward, hesitate, and repeat, creating a sense of a system caught in a loop, promising release but enacting delay. This tension between movement and stasis forms a core element of Nguyen’s artistic exploration.

Memory as Pressure and Repair

Nguyen’s practice, as highlighted in “Press, Release,” is characterized by a unique approach to softness, which she interprets not as comfort but as a physical manifestation of pressure, repetition, and inherited histories. Through sculpture, sound, and installation, she scrutinizes how memory is adjusted and translated over time, often focusing on objects that appear unremarkable at first glance. The exhibition will feature commonplace items that are rendered familiar yet subtly distorted, prompting viewers to consider what happens when societal values shift away from speed and optimization towards attunement and repair. Materials like memory foam, sugar, and a piano bench become vessels for holding bodies, habits, failures, and generational gestures, with her work listening to the imprints left by pressure.

Earlier Works Informing the Exhibition

“Press, Release” builds upon themes explored in Nguyen’s previous works. In “In the manner of speaking (me and grandma and you are both tired),” she used welded aluminum ballet brackets and memory foam to create a sculpture that juxtaposes support and discipline with the yielding nature of memory foam. This piece explores fatigue as a shared generational experience, with the soft material embodying memory and the hard material enforcing form.

“Gentle Integrity,” shown at Documenta 15, further investigates familial memory through a sculpture made from cast caramelized sugar candies. The candies were taken from the mold of the artist’s grandmother’s missing chair leg, creating a fragile, 145-centimeter-long form. Here, sweetness becomes a substitute for domestic support, and the act of recasting an absence in sugar highlights the temporary and bodily nature of repair. The work acknowledges the use, age, and repair of household objects, holding the grandmother’s presence through a form that defies complete stabilization.

Sound and Practice

In “Transcripts from Home for December,” Nguyen shifts her focus to sound, reinterpreting the opening of Tchaikovsky’s “December/Winter” through recordings of her stepsister practicing the piece. Housed within a piano bench, the installation reveals the process of learning as a vulnerable act, exposing repetition and effort rather than a polished performance. The work transforms the piano bench into an instrument and the room into a stage for an unfinished mastery, treating failure as evidence of attention.

Expanding to Global Movement

When viewed alongside these earlier pieces, “Press, Release” demonstrates an expansion of Nguyen’s artistic language from personal family memory to broader themes of global movement. The conveyor belt directly evokes the systems that process goods, labor, and luggage across borders. The salvaged wood used in its construction carries histories of boats and thresholds, while the objects themselves, sourced from Vietnam, Thailand, and Britain, traverse a machine that resists efficiency. The installation holds a palpable tension between rigidity and movement, memory and erasure, glamour and debris. It also connects to the local histories of Phuket and South London, embedding fragmented identities within a larger system of circulation where labor, goods, and cultures shift through contact. Nguyen’s conveyor belt ultimately offers a stuttering image of progress, a machine that moves with a fundamentally altered purpose.

Datos clave
| Aspect | Detail |
|—|—|
| Exhibition Title | Press, Release |
| Artist | Thuy Tien Nguyen |
| Venue | Gasworks, South London |
| Duration | July 9 – September 13, 2026 |
| Key Themes | Memory, objects, pressure, repair, time, circulation |

This exhibition is particularly relevant to Paionia7 readers as it delves into the materiality of everyday objects and their capacity to hold and transmit memory, resonating with our focus on design, architecture, and the cultural significance of built and crafted environments. Nguyen’s exploration of systems, circulation, and the tension between efficiency and human experience offers a nuanced perspective on how we interact with our surroundings and the stories they contain.

Fuente: Designboom, https://www.designboom.com/art/thuy-tien-nguyen-rethinks-carry-memory-familiar-objects-press-release-exhibition/

Datos clave