James Cohan is pleased to present Lullaby of Cannons for the Night, an exhibition by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, on view from February 14 through April 5, 2025, at 291 Grand Street. This is Nguyen’s third solo exhibition with James Cohan. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Friday, February 14, from 5-7 PM.
This exhibition marks the New York premiere of a recent two-channel video installation, The Sounds of Cannons, Familiar Like Sad Refrains / Đại Bác Nghe Quen Như Câu Dạo Buồn, 2021, alongside related kinetic sculptures made from bomb fragments. Collectively, the works on view in this exhibition explore how materials hold memory and the potential for transformation, reincarnation, and healing.
The bombing of several regions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War (1955 to 1975) by the United States Armed Forces—what is considered the largest aerial bombardment in human history—left hundreds of thousands of unexploded ordnances hidden underground, that still pose a tremendous threat to local inhabitants today. In The Sounds of Cannons, Nguyen juxtaposes archival footage from the US army with recently recorded images of an unexploded ordnance (UXO) deactivation in the Vietnamese coastal province of Quảng Trị.
Taking its title from a line in the late sixties song Đại Bác Ru Đêm (Lullaby of Cannons for the Night) by Vietnamese songwriter and poet Trịnh Công Sơn, the film follows one of the unexploded ordnances and gives it a voice through an animistic transformation. From its drop, to its detonation in the rainforests of Vietnam, it offers closure to a menacing narrative that had been on hold for half a century. For Nguyen, this work is part of a regenerative process. It aims to contribute towards the healing of a land that was dispossessed by its contamination. Landmine and UXO pollution has especially affected rural populations, leaving a dramatic trail of fatalities and amputated limbs, and those populations must be liberated from the threat of death that lies beneath the surface.
Nguyen's video and sculptural works explore the transformative possibilities of material animism and reincarnation. These concepts also evidence the resilience of communities working through trauma, offering a generative space to construct futures based on embodied notions of building and rebuilding.
James Cohan will present a solo booth of related sculptural work by Tuan Andrew Nguyen at Frieze New York 2025. To learn more, please click HERE.
