Tammy Nguyen’s artworks give form to her philosophical and ethical enquiries. Allegorical and interdisciplinary, they mingle references to geopolitics, literature and ecology, articulating an expansive visual language that combines painting, printmaking and collage.
In the Biennale Arte 2026, Nguyen presents a series of paintings that connect legacies of the Cold War and Viet Nam War, the persistent threat of nuclear war, and, as a kind of inter-temporal guide, Dante’s Divine Comedy. The composition is lush and the references dense, with imagery from literature, volcanic explosions, and events like the Cuban Missile Crisis. As when looking at the sky, there is both a knowing and a not-knowing. Figure and ground flicker in alternation. The works are covered in stars that are hot-stamped onto their layered surface. The choice of paper as substrate lets the artworks breathe, creating space for both harmony and dissonance.
Elegant, elaborate artist books are central to Nguyen’s practice. Included in the exhibition are three books from the Inferno series: A Welter of Language, Snake in the Grass and Open Eyes, along with Paradise: The Bread of Angels, which contains eleven booklets. For Tammy, a surface, like an individual or a nation, can tune into and hold multiple voices. Her work is a method for researching the sublime, agitating the edges of what is known.
—Meena Hasan
