Description

Ugly Duckling Presse,paperback

Publication Date:April 15, 2022

Publisher Marketing:In O, artist and writer Tammy Nguyen returns to Vietnam to visit the caves of the Phong Nha Karst. This journey into the Karsts wind-carved teeth resounds with the traditional songs of Nguyens guides, whose melodies produce the O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O that echoes through narratives woven together around it as a visual and sonic spine: the story of Nguyens Uncle Van, an opportunistic businessman who traded in Vietnamese porcelain vessels; her coming-of-age as a child with missing teeth, and the material and mineral histories of the veneers that eventually completed her American Smile; the plastic paradise of the man-made island of Forest City, a simulacrum of natural beauty kept uncannily bright and lush by the flow of global investment capital; and, behind it all, a retelling of Platos Allegory of the Cave that supplies what the original parable lacked: an understanding of fantasys role in the construction of a sublime. In Os anti-allegory, the personal and geopolitical sit uncomfortably alongside one another. The shape of a bowl becomes the mouth of a cave. The uncanny naturalism of Nguyens zirconium veneers reflect Forest Citys manicured paradise. What emerges is a kaleidoscopic meditation on the play of language across scales: how it rebounds between our stories of self and the semantic regimes of global capital alike.