Alison Nguyen
Bio: Alison Nguyen is a New York-based artist whose work spans video, installation, performance, and text. Her work has been presented at MIT List Visual Arts Center, The Everson Museum x Lightwork, e-flux, International Film Festival Oberhausen, CPH:DOX, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Channels Festival International Biennial of Video Art, The Dowse Art Museum, The International Studio & Curatorial Program, AC Gallery Beijing, Half Gallery, Signs and Symbols, La Kaje, Hartnett Gallery, Ann Arbor Film Festival, True/False Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, The Jewish Museum, and Microscope Gallery, among others. In 2018 Nguyen was featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
www.alisonnguyen.com
Instagram: @alison.c.nguyen
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: The cultural implications of technology are a primary concern in my work. I’m interested in how images are produced, circulated, and consumed in mainstream culture and media, whether in film, advertising, or in virtual spaces. I draw from a range of disciplines, borrowing methodologies from documentary, performance, and architecture. Within each body of work I create highly considered, layered worlds which are offset by conditions I create for improvisation, humor, and failure.
Elements of my current work on view, history as hypnosis, draw from a live action video centering on a speculative fiction. Flipping cinematic tropes of science fiction and the American road film, history as hypnosis surfaces themes of alienation, assimilation, and refusal, centering on characters and narratives that are often omitted from history and the screen. The piece follows three women who are programmed by Artificial Intelligence and whose memories from their previous existence have been erased. Directed to search for a man named “X,” the three venture from the California desert to gas stations, gritty strip malls, starchitecture, and underground enclaves. Interweaving subtle references to past geopolitical violence associated with America’s war in Vietnam, the work offers a complex take on how memory, consciousness, and historical narratives merge.
History as Hypnosis V.02 (20 min. looped, Three-channel video, color, sound, metal seating, 2023); History as Hauntology V.01 (Open back of limousine, metal, casters, foam, electronic parts, and LED lights, 2023)
First Year Exhibition
L to R: Cu (24" x 18", Silkscreen on paper, Text by Matthew Nguyen, 2022); history as hypnosis (part #1), (41" x 72"; 03:00 loop, Single-channel video projection, color, stereo sound, 2022)
