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The Lycoming College Art Gallery will open a new exhibit, “Paris, Orange County: The Diasporic Imaginations of Vietnam,” featuring the works of Van Tran Nguyen. The show will open on Jan. 31 and run until Feb. 28. This exhibit is free and open to the public.
“The multimedia installations in this exhibition are concerned with the experience of a person who in Vietnamese is called a Việt Kiều, which is someone who leaves Vietnam, and returns (or does not return) as an ‘overseas Vietnamese,’” said Nguyen. “I view this identity (and ultimately, my own) as a lens to explore the meaning of nostalgia in Vietnamese-American media. The media used are a collection of Vietnamese variety television, music videos from Vietnamese musicians and composers who are in exile from Vietnam and home videos from my childhood.”
Nguyen was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and biology, as well as a master’s of fine arts from the University at Buffalo. She is currently a doctoral candidate of the philosophy in electronic arts program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Her research centers on nostalgia and nation-building from a Vietnamese diasporic perspective.
She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions including “Ill at Ease: Dis-ease in Art,” “Shape of a Pocket,” and “Strange Agency.” In 2016, Tran Nguyen and co-curator Natalie Fleming curated the exhibition “The Measure of All Things: Rethinking Humanism through Art” at the University at Buffalo Department of Art Gallery. In 2017, Tran Nguyen and Fleming opened their group exhibition “Forging American: Art in the Workings of an Asian American Rust Belt” at Big Orbit Project Space, CEPA Gallery, in Buffalo New York. In 2019 she opened “Art Stands Still” in Troy, N.Y., at Collar Works Gallery. Tran Nguyen’s short film “I love Vietnam but Vietnam likes me okay,” was an official selection for the 2019 Saigon Experimental Film Festival.
The Lycoming College Art Gallery, located in downtown Williamsport at 25 W. Fourth St., contributes to the city’s arts culture and allows the College to become more involved with the surrounding community. Lycoming art students have the opportunity to interact with visiting artists and learn first-hand the inner workings of an art gallery.
The gallery is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, 4 – 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. and 5 – 9 p.m.; and on First Fridays, 4-9 p.m., during exhibitions. For more information, please visit the gallery online at: https://www.lycoming.edu/art/gallery.html or send an email to dirocco@lycoming.edu.