My Flight Was Magnificent, but Futile
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Circle Burst, 2024, 155mm artillery shells, brass from artillery shell, brass from pounded artillery shells, powder coat, concrete, bell tuned to G3, 192.43 Hz, 72 x 94 1/2 in., courtesy of James Cohan Gallery.
What happens to a dream deferred?
…does it explode? [1]
Who do you become if it doesn't explode? When you’re hurled into foreign land, transfixed by the looming presence of undetonated potential? When decades pass and the land embraces you as it gradually subsumes you, when your American Dream was one of destruction?
Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s third solo exhibition with James Cohan, Lullaby of Cannons for the Night, transforms the Chinatown gallery into an excavation site, using his regenerative practice to confront the gruesome history of his materials. The exhibition consists of three skeletal sculptures made from the shells of undetonated bombs and a two channel short film. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer encounters Circle Burst (2024), a gangly, six-foot sculpture with an eerily ominous presence. Two thin brass arms reach out from a weighty, carbon-colored metal base, as the pendulous left arm extends towards the floor, holding a flat, circular slice of pounded brass. The right arm reaches towards the ceiling and sprouts several similar phalanges, holding smaller brass circles. While Circle Burst is a handsomely balanced sculpture, reminiscent of the scales of justice, its full meaning is revealed only after viewing Nguyen’s video installation playing in the next room.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s two-channel video installation, The Sounds of Cannons, Familiar Like Sad Refrains / Đại Bác Nghe Quen Như Câu Dạo Buồn (2021), takes place in Quảng Trị, the site of the largest bombardment in history. [2] During the Vietnam war, the United States dropped five million tons of bombs that flattened the province. To this day, nearly 800,000 tons of American bombs remain unexploded, contaminating twenty percent of Vietnam’s land. [3]
Installation View, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Sound of Cannons, Familiar Like Sad Refrains / Đại Bác Nghe Quen Như Câu Dạo Buồn, 2021, Manifesta 14, Prishtina, Kosovo. Photo by Majlinda Hoxha, courtesy of James Cohan Gallery.
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
The Sounds of Cannons, Familiar Like Sad Refrains anthropomorphizes one of the countless undetonated bombs in Quảng Trị, imbuing it with an introspective demeanor. Nguyen explores purpose, power, and regenerative futures through the bomb’s narrative. In the video’s narrative, the explosive lay submerged in the mud of Quảng Trị for fifty years, decaying like a raisin in the sun. The melancholic storytelling carries the viewer through the film, his voice coarse with contempt as he recalls his “magnificent” yet fruitless flight.
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Each venomous sentence booms over the speakers, reverberating through the gallery’s floorboards, making it hard not to fear the narrator, even as a team of excavators lay the bomb to rest. They give him a proper burial, per Vietnamese custom. As the team lowers the bomb into a shallow grave, he mutters, “Am I just a failure?” before contemplating what his karma may be and if there is hope for rebirth. Perhaps the rusted explosive has already met his karma: a sedentary life spent marinating in what one could have been. Gradually, he merges with the very rainforest he was destined to destroy. The anguish from his dream deferred festers like a sore, leaving him “a shadow of himself. ”
Juxtaposing the burial footage of the right channel, the left channel highlights the spectacle of the American war machine, flashing black and white archival footage of US soldiers prepping cannons and naval ships haunting the sea, spewing bomb after bomb.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Sound of Cannons, Familiar Like Sad Refrains, 2021, Manifesta 14, Prishtina, Kosovo. Courtesy of Amanda SRGE_Lindsay.
Nguyen’s use of audio isolation is sublime, effectively toggling between the bomb’s soliloquy, a Vietnamese ballad from the sixties (the eponymous Đại Bác Ru Đêm/Lullaby of Cannons for the Night), and the raw sounds of the US imperialism. As the bomb’s narration continues, his voice echoes with a tinny hollowness, each word bouncing around his cavernous shell. Surprisingly, in his final moments facing the sun, the bomb remains hopeful for a chance at reincarnation—perhaps imagining a new body and a renewed sense of purpose.
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Finally, the viewer encounters Dragon Tail (2025), a sprawling aerial sculpture, made distinct by its rays of golden wire protruding from curvilinear branches. Akin to Circle Burst, the thin branches of Dragon Tail support discs of pounded artillery shells. However, with the video installation’s added context, Dragon Tail reads as a modernist depiction of flare bombs hanging in the sky. Each wire branch becomes a smoke trail, tracing the flares’ flight, while the pounded artillery shells reflect the gallery's intense, white lighting. It is as though the viewer watches the very moment bombs are dropping.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Dragon Tail, 2025, stainless steel with bomb metal, brass from pounded artillery shell, paracord, bell tuned to A3, 432 Hz, 76 3/4 x 118 1/8 in., courtesy of James Cohan Gallery.
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Nguyen’s kinetic sculptures grant the narrating bomb its dream: offering them a rebirth by transforming them into works of art. While the Calder-esque sculptures dangle and swirl in air, the weight of the shells bring a certain gravity both formally and contextually. Though their harrowing past lives are inextricable, forever lodged into the memory of the material, Nguyen allows a delicate beauty to emerge from these explosives. He makes no effort to conceal their brutal anatomy; instead, he allows new life to grow out of the shells. It is precisely this generative process that reveals Nguyen’s own faith in the resilience and future of Vietnam. Lullaby of Cannons for the Night is the artist’s reminder that terror is not everlasting; radical hope can pave the way for collective healing.
Lullaby of Cannons for the Night is on view at James Cohan Gallery from February 14 through April 5, 2025.
[1] Langston Hughs, “Harlem,” in The Collected Work of Langston Hughs (New York: Knopf, 1994).
[2] For further reading, visit https://renewvn.org/the-most-bombed-place-on-earth/.
[3] For further reading, visit https://www.peacetreesvietnam.org/about/faq.html#:~:text=Since%20the%20war%20ended%2C%20more,to%20put%20residents%20in%20danger.
