Art Inquiries
Abstract
Over the last decade, we have witnessed the ascendancy, consolidation and mobilization of far-right movements around the world – not least in Germany. The Vietnamese-German artist Sung Tieu lives there and produces mixed-media work on recent histories of state violence, racism, migration and surveillance. In her solo show 1992, 2025 at the KW (Kunst Werke) Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Tieu expanded on her previous projects about the 1980 labor recruitment agreement between the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that resulted in nearly 70,000 Vietnamese workers relocating to Germany. Her new body of work centers on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent xenophobic violence in reunified Germany. In it, she manipulates photographs, newspaper clippings, and written documents related to this topic so audiences can see them anew today. 1992, 2025 offers a counter-archive of contemporary German history, which stands in stark opposition to the identitarian discourse, cultural narratives, and memory politics of an increasingly powerful German Right.
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Recommended Citation
Alam, Lina. "Exhibition Review - Sung Tieu: 1992, 2025." 20, 1 (2025). https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/artinquiries_secacart/vol20/iss1/12
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