Tuan Andrew Nguyen. 'Our ghosts live in the future' at the Miró Foundation

The Joan Miró Foundation presents the first solo exhibition in Spain of the Vietnamese-American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Saigon, 1976), winner of the eighth edition of the Joan Miró Prize. The exhibition includes some of the most relevant video installations from his recent output, as well as a selection of his sculptures made from bombs and artillery shells from the Vietnam War. The exhibition can be visited until September 24, 2024.

Nguyen, born in Saigon and raised as a refugee in the United States after the war ended, uses his personal experience and the history of his country as a guiding thread in his work. The exhibition reveals the intersection between the conflicts of the second half of the 20th century and the impact they have had on the people who have suffered them and on their descendants.

© Fundació Joan Miró. Foto Pep Herrero

Our ghosts live in the future allows a first approach to the work of Tuan Andrew Nguyen and invites us to immerse ourselves in his artistic vision and his commitment to address social and historical issues that have to do with the colonial legacy and its destabilizing effects. In retrospect, his reference to Alexander Calder, fervent opponent of the Vietnam war, invites a re-reading of the work of this American artist so linked to Joan Miró and Josep Lluís Sert and so present in the collection from the Joan Miró Foundation. This work connects with the museum's collection and with the legacy of Joan Miró, who also had a deep relationship with his native land. This is not only a retrospective of the work of Tuan Andrew Nguyen, but an immersion in his artistic vision and his commitment to social and historical themes that are recurrent in his narrative.

The exhibition presents an unpublished work, a sculpture made of reused war material produced in the artist's workshop in Saigon. This work, like the others presented at the beginning of the exhibition, is inspired by Alexander Calder's mobiles, specifically 3 Corcovado, a large-scale sculpture that belongs to the Collection of the Joan Miró Foundation . Both at the beginning and at the end of the exhibition, Nguyen dialogues with key artists of modern Western art who shaped the hegemonic artistic discourse of the 20th century.