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Video of Nguyen discussing his exhibition and the making of The Boat People, 3 mins
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The centerpiece of this exhibition is The Boat People, a single channel video installation displayed alongside hand-carved wooden sculptural objects. Set in an unspecified post-apocalyptic future at the precarious edge of humanity’s possible extinction, the film follows a band of children led by a strong-willed and resourceful little girl. Calling themselves The Boat People, they travel the seas and collect the stories of a world they never knew through objects that survived over time.
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The film centers itself around a series of objects found in and around Bataan, Philippines and anchors itself to the multiple layers of history in wars, migration, and perseverance contained in the land itself. Nguyen is interested in objects that have survived through time: objects that humanity has created, and in turn inherited. His work parses both the stories objects contain and our memories of the objects themselves.
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Tuan Andrew Nguyen filming on location in Bataan, Philippines during his residency at Bellas Artes Projects. The film was shot at various landmarks in the area including the Boat People Museum, a site which preserves archival records of the Philippines Refugee Processing Center refugee camp. The museum has the original boat that crashed onto the shores of Morong in 1981, carrying eleven of the first Vietnamese refugees to arrive in Bataan.
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Bataan was the site of the PRPC [Philippine Refugee Processing Center], which processed roughly 300,000 Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees who fled their countries after the Vietnam War. A large number of these refugees landed on the coast of Bataan by boat. This is a replica of one of the original vessels that were kept on the grounds of the PRPC and is now on view in the museum.
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Nguyen cast five children from the local fishing village as the main characters of the film. Making their film debut are Gryshyll Reyes Ilarina as Riana, Michael Mendoza Soronio, John Carlos Cruz Moris, Jescee Dheivid Taba Recinte, and Benedict Recinte Revelo.
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Available Photographs
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‘ There’s a way that spiritual practices, specifically in Vietnam, have been embedded with strategies of political resistance. Fire and self-immolation have been well known acts of political resistance where the spiritual and the political collide. Fire becomes a strong metaphor for freedom and liberation, spiritual and political. This is exemplified in Thich Quang Duc’s act of self-immolation. The image of this action has been burnt deeply into my own psyche. A collision between the spiritual and the political - the struggle for freedom.'
-Tuan Andrew Nguyen
Tuan Andrew Nguyen: A Lotus in a Sea of Fire: Gallery Exhibition at 291 Grand St
Past viewing_room
