Tuan Andrew Nguyen The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019

The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019, is a four-channel video installation that had its world premiere at the Sharjah Biennial, and its US premiere in SOFT POWER at SFMoMA. This project envisions the memories and desires of descendants of the tirailleurs sénégalais, West African colonial soldiers who were among the French forces sent to combat Vietnamese liberation uprisings in the 1940's. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, hundreds of Vietnamese women migrated to Africa with their children and their Senegalese husbands who had been stationed in Indochina. Other soldiers left their Vietnamese wives behind and took only their children, sometimes raising them without knowledge of their origins. Nguyen collaborated with members of the Vietnamese community in Senegal to write and stage imagined conversations with or between their parents or grandparents that highlight nuances in strategies of remembering. As narrators and actors, the voices of these descendants embody a historical conscience that challenges understandings of decolonising societies.

COLLECTIONS
Sharjah Art Foundation, San Francisco
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia
Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), Paris
National Gallery Sinagpore, Singapore