Whitney Biennial 2017
Mar 17–June 11, 2017
Tuan Andrew Nguyen
39
Floor 5
Born 1976 in Saigon, Vietnam
Lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s short film The Island is shot entirely on Pulau Bidong, an island off the coast of Malaysia that became the largest and longest-operating refugee camp after the Vietnam War. The artist and his family were some of the 250,000 people who inhabited the tiny island between 1978 and 1991; it was once one of the most densely populated places in the world. After the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shuttered the camp in 1991, Pulau Bidong became overgrown by jungle, filled with crumbling monuments and relics.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s film takes place in a dystopian future in which the last man on earth—having escaped forced repatriation to Vietnam—finds a United Nations scientist who has washed ashore after the world’s last nuclear battle. By weaving together footage from Bidong’s past with a narrative set in its future, Nguyen questions the individual’s relationship to history, trauma, nationhood, and displacement.
The Island, 2017
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, production photograph for The Island, 2017. Ultra-high-definition video, color, sound; 42:05 min. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchased jointly by the Whitney Museum of American Art with funds from the Film and Video Committee and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with funds from The Fund for Contemporary Art 2020.18. © Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Image courtesy the artist