Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Island
On view through May 4, 2025

Tuan Andrew Nguyen creates multimedia installations that blend fact, memory, myth and mysticism and use lush imagery to draw out these entanglements. His video work The Island (2017) is now on view, making its Washington, D.C. debut at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It is being shown for the first time with Bidong Spirit I, a sculpted headdress Nguyen created for the film.

The Island is set on Pulau Bidong, a tiny Malaysian island which became a primary destination for Vietnamese, including the artist’s family, escaping by boat after the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975. In this imagined future, the site once again becomes a place of last refuge. Through the main character, who has lived his entire life on the island and is revealed to be one of the sole survivors of nuclear war, Nguyen traces historical traumas and displacements and questions individual and collective responsibilities between nations and peoples, and between past and future.

The 42-minute video runs continuously and can be entered at any time. In English and Vietnamese with translation subtitles.

The Island Gallery Talk
Tuesday, October 8, 10 a.m.

Smithsonian American Art Museum
Meet in the G Street Lobby
Free | Registration required

Join SAAM’s Time-Based Media Curator Saisha Grayson for a special, before public hours screening and discussion of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s single-channel color video The Island. Explore how Nguyen combines history with futurism to address contemporary topics such as the impact of forced global migrations in imaginative and striking ways.

This screening of the 42-minute video will be followed by a post-screening discussion with Grayson about the installation. This program will be presented in English and Vietnamese.

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