Hear artist Tiffany Chung discuss her new immersive installation Rise Into the Atmosphere in conversation with Dr. Vivian Li, the DMA's Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art. The latest iteration in the Museum's Concourse mural series, Rise Into the Atmosphere centers the personal narratives and cultural memories embedded in accounts of forced migration and movement, in recognition and celebration of these lived experiences that are often neglected within history. Chung will talk about the ambitious process and collaboration with 28 international participants in the making of her multisensorial installation, and the development of this work in the context of her larger oeuvre spanning over two decades of engagement with the micro, hidden histories of ordinary people that counterbalance official grand narratives or those dominating in the public sphere.
Tiffany Chung (Vietnam/USA) is globally noted for her interdisciplinary practice that enquires into a complex framework of social, political, economic, and environmental processes, at times entwined in landscape archaeology and historical ecology. Unpacking conflict, geopolitical negotiation, spatial transformation, climate crisis, and forced migration across time and terrain, Chung analyzes data and materializes her findings into hand-drawn and embroidered cartographic works and installations consisting of paintings, photographs, sculptures, and videos. Chung’s work excavates layers in histories of traumatized topographies, creating interventions into narratives produced through statecraft or dominant in the public sphere with cultural memories and lived experiences.
Chung’s exhibition Rise Into the Atmosphere is currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art until August 2025. Her prototype monument For the Living was recently presented at the National Mall (DC) as part of Beyond Granite: Pulling Together (2023). Chung’s exhibition Vietnam, Past Is Prologue at the Smithsonian American Art Museum was listed by The Art Newspaper as one of 2019’s ten most attended exhibitions globally. Chung has exhibited at museums and biennials worldwide, including the 56th Venice Biennale (Italy), MoMA (NY), the British Museum (UK), the Nobel Peace Center (Norway), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (Germany), Louisiana MoMA & SMK (Denmark), SFMOMA, Sharjah Biennale (UAE), XIII Biennial de Cuenca (Ecuador), Sydney Biennale (Australia), and Gwangju Biennale (Korea), among others.
Chung was a Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellow at RITM, Yale University (2021) and finalist for the Vera List Center Prize for Art & Social Justice (2018–2020). She was a recipient of Asia Society India’s Art Game Changer Award (2020) and Sharjah Biennial Artist Prize (2013).