Sung Tieu

The work of Sung Tieu addresses the writing of history and analyzes the transnational movement of people and objects, with the artist’s own life often playing a role. In this exhibition, Tieu is presenting two works that have not been shown before and that are linked to other works by the artist.

The video screened in the exhibition refers to the earlier project Formative Years on Dearth (2019), for which Tieu undertook research in the archive of the British conceptual artist John Latham (1921 – 2006). Here she tied her own biography in with Latham’s life by presenting correspondence, documents, photographs, and newspaper cuttings on themes including Germany, the Fluxus movement, and transnationalism. The completed installation consisted of a loose and imaginative extract of information, in the context of which this video was made. It shows a satellite image that the artist took from the app Google Earth and that begins with a slow zoom into the city of London. At the image’s center there are two seating elements that played a key role as scale reproductions in steel in the further exhibition project. Very close to the square in Bethnal Green shown on the satellite image there had been a similar and earlier tragedy to the disastrous fire of 2017 at Grenfell Tower, which, like the later disaster, hit a mainly migrant community and was caused by comparable faults in a building. In a reader’s letter on an article of 1995, which is part of this work, someone identifying themself as Ching wrote: ​“While the article does a decent job of recounting the geopolitical decisions that brought us here, it does nothing to depict our daily lives. I am a witness of the latter; I admit I can’t speak much to the former. In my short life I have mostly seen what is right in front of me, and not the great power struggles between adults in offices in Washington, Hanoi, London and the former East Berlin. […] Throughout the article he never engages with our community, or our common destiny. We have real lives. I, for example, recently celebrated my seventh birthday here, surrounded by friends and family.” One might say that Tieu’s work always attempts to combine large political or geostrategic events with subjective perspectives, with fiction also playing a certain role. The article thus paints a picture of the inside of a refugee home that is not identical with the place shown in the video. The description is based on a real photo showing the artist and her mother in refugee accommodation in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, where they lived when they arrived in Germany in 1992.

The second work in the exhibition also refers to both London and the artist’s own life. In Top Wheel Sung Tieu Natal Chart, 12 Jul 1987, Sun 6:45am ICT Hai Duong, Vietnam, 20°56’N 106°20’E, Bottom Wheel ICA London Natal Chart, 9 Feb 1948, Mon 8:30pm GMT London, UK, 51°30’N 0°10’E, Placidus the artist combines a number of different elements. An abstract safe door that can be opened with a handle, and two number locks are hanging on the wall of the gallery. The two number locks are two birth horoscopes, with the upper one representing the artist herself and the other the date of the foundation of the ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts London. The twelfth house in astrology, which includes most of the planets in Sung Tieu’s birth horoscope, represents the realm of the collective unconscious. With her interest in security architectures like prisons, military operations, and also banking, one might think that the artist wishes to explore precisely this unconscious realm, or perhaps our need for protection.


Top Wheel Sung Tieu Natal Chart, 12 Jul 1987,
Sun 6:45am ICT Hai Duong, Vietnam, 20°56’N 106°20’E, Bottom Wheel ICA London Natal Chart, 9 Feb 1948,
Mon 8:30pm GMT London, UK, 51°30’N 0°10’E, Placidus, 2022
Stainless steel, engraved stainless steel, screws
38 × 50 × 1 cm
Courtesy the artist; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin

51°28’29.1”N 0°04’55.6”W, 2019
HD video, sound 01:56 min.
Digital print, 38 × 62 cm
Edition of 5 + 1 AP (# 1/5)
Courtesy the artist; Emalin, London