In this series of hanging mobiles, which belong to the same body of work as the recent film The Unburied Sound of a Troubled Horizon, 2022, Tuan Andrew Nguyen explores the ways in which material contains memory and holds potential for transformation, reincarnation, and healing.

Across the sculptures that comprise this series, Nguyen subjects the reclaimed 57mm brass artillery shells to varying degrees of physical transformation before tuning them to carefully calibrated healing frequencies. For this mobile, Nguyen etches an almost geometric pattern of dragon scales across the surface of the artillery shell, from which the limbs of the hanging mobile are suspended. In Vietnamese mythology, the dragon is considered a protector of the nation, symbolizing nobility and immortality. By using this motif to transform an object of war into an object capable of healing, Nguyen suggests a different kind of immortality–one grounded in reincarnation and reinvention.