At once a personal memoir, tribute, and memento, Lisa Nguyen’s work presents an intimate and compelling autobiography. This personal recollection is an invitation to the viewer—to consider, commiserate, and ultimately to reflect. The history she constructs is a personal one, seemingly non-objective (and thus ostensibly less authoritative). However, as Roland Barthes hints, an official history that reveals supposedly essential truths and facts often diminishes the complexities and indirect costs of conflict. This official history supplies the backdrop to Nguyen’s photographs: in her work, she relates personal stories, which enrich the portrayal of loss, both in her life, and in Vietnamese history. Here, the past seeps forward as a spectre, always immaterially present, and ultimately never able to be fully described.
See Essay by Cynthia Foo below in PDF
Liza Nguyen was born in France and divides her time between Paris and Dusseldorf. In Dusseldorf, she works with Thomas Ruff at the Fine Art Academy. She has two Master degrees: one from Sobornne and the other from the national school, Louis Lumiere in Photography. Liza Nguyen has exhibited her work in Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States. Her artist book My Father received several awards in France, including La bourse du Talent. Souvenirs of Vietnam recently received the Prix Fnac de la Photographie and the grand prize of the International Biennial of Art of Lulea in Sweden.
