Tuan Andrew Nguyen
The Warning, 2017
LED sign panel
Original Sizes Available:
104 x 200 x 9 cm
104 x 200 x 9 cm
My Ailing Beliefs Can Cure Your Wretched Desires by Tuan Andrew Nguyen Presenting his newest series, My Ailing Beliefs Can Cure Your Wretched Desires, acclaimed Vietnamese artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen...
My Ailing Beliefs Can Cure Your Wretched Desires by Tuan Andrew Nguyen
Presenting his newest series, My Ailing Beliefs Can Cure Your Wretched Desires, acclaimed Vietnamese artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b.1976) explores the relationships between mythology and worship, animal extinction and human consumption and political protest.
Highlighting the destructive sides of “belief” and “belief systems”, Nguyen draws attention to the continued use of rhinoceros horn in traditional Chinese medicine in Vietnam, which is believed to cure cancer and other illnesses. The global environmental emergency regarding rhinoceros populations all over the world has been fueled by human consumption and long-established belief systems. Tons of illegal rhinoceros horn from South Africa en route to Vietnam and China has been seized in recent years. The last Javanese Rhino was poached and killed in Vietnam in April 2010.
Similarly, illegal pangolin poaching and trading is leading the species towards extinction in Southeast Asia, India and West Africa. Their scales and meat are believed to treat a multitude of illnesses. Reminiscent of a mythical dragon’s scales, Nguyen questions whether this resemblance will determine the pangolin’s ill-fated plight. Mythical animals, like the dragon, the kirin (qilin), and the phoenix in Asian cultures, are revered for their influences on all factors of one’s life such as health, financial success, longevity as well as being regarded as auspicious creatures. It is this overlap of cultural beliefs and social psychology that complicates the relationship between humans and animals whereby mythical creatures are revered, whereas living animals are killed in the belief that they possess “magical” curative properties.
My Ailing Beliefs Can Cure Your Wretched Desires examines the confluence of these ideologies and practices of consumption. The objects presented play with distorted, fantastical imaginaries of the past and new imaginations of technology and futurism to explore the complexities of our relationship with the natural world, as well as the possibilities of an alternative relationship with mythology and nature.
Exploring the duality of reverence versus condemnation, Death Before Extinction is presented as both an altar and a political monument. The altar form is prevalent in a multiplicity of religious aesthetics that span the same geography as the pangolin trafficking regions. The object of worship here, presented in almost otherworldly form, is a pangolin, posed like a deity or a political martyr, holding a delicate sign that reads “Death Before Extinction”. The artwork proposes a fictitious future narrative that subverts ways in which different cultures of politics have raised political leaders to the level of God.
Presenting his newest series, My Ailing Beliefs Can Cure Your Wretched Desires, acclaimed Vietnamese artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b.1976) explores the relationships between mythology and worship, animal extinction and human consumption and political protest.
Highlighting the destructive sides of “belief” and “belief systems”, Nguyen draws attention to the continued use of rhinoceros horn in traditional Chinese medicine in Vietnam, which is believed to cure cancer and other illnesses. The global environmental emergency regarding rhinoceros populations all over the world has been fueled by human consumption and long-established belief systems. Tons of illegal rhinoceros horn from South Africa en route to Vietnam and China has been seized in recent years. The last Javanese Rhino was poached and killed in Vietnam in April 2010.
Similarly, illegal pangolin poaching and trading is leading the species towards extinction in Southeast Asia, India and West Africa. Their scales and meat are believed to treat a multitude of illnesses. Reminiscent of a mythical dragon’s scales, Nguyen questions whether this resemblance will determine the pangolin’s ill-fated plight. Mythical animals, like the dragon, the kirin (qilin), and the phoenix in Asian cultures, are revered for their influences on all factors of one’s life such as health, financial success, longevity as well as being regarded as auspicious creatures. It is this overlap of cultural beliefs and social psychology that complicates the relationship between humans and animals whereby mythical creatures are revered, whereas living animals are killed in the belief that they possess “magical” curative properties.
My Ailing Beliefs Can Cure Your Wretched Desires examines the confluence of these ideologies and practices of consumption. The objects presented play with distorted, fantastical imaginaries of the past and new imaginations of technology and futurism to explore the complexities of our relationship with the natural world, as well as the possibilities of an alternative relationship with mythology and nature.
Exploring the duality of reverence versus condemnation, Death Before Extinction is presented as both an altar and a political monument. The altar form is prevalent in a multiplicity of religious aesthetics that span the same geography as the pangolin trafficking regions. The object of worship here, presented in almost otherworldly form, is a pangolin, posed like a deity or a political martyr, holding a delicate sign that reads “Death Before Extinction”. The artwork proposes a fictitious future narrative that subverts ways in which different cultures of politics have raised political leaders to the level of God.