LIMINAL collapse

Artist Tammy Nguyen tells Tatler why exposing a multiplicity of perspectives is crucial to understanding the truth, and why we should learn how to embrace the challenge of moral ambiguity

- Aaina Bhargava

Not many people would draw parallels between Dante's Inferno, the epic poem about a descent into hell, and the Cold War-era space race, but artist Tammy Nguyen does. "Both trajectories are into hot unknown places: one into the core of the Earth and the other into the orbit of the sun," she says.

Nguyen has a knack for finding connections between seemingly disparate, random events and phenomena, and bringing them together under the seductive guise of her intricately detailed, saturated artworks. Closer inspection of her work reveals profound existential observations and queries that tend to evoke confusion. "I like playing with contradictions and, through art, making those contradictions create even more tensions," she says. "I create problems for myself to explore. I like the challenge."

The unusual convergence of Inferno and the space race formed the central topic of her recent exhibition A Comedy for Mortals: Inferno at Lehmann Maupin Seoul, her first solo show with the gallery and her first in Korea. The show, which comprised works of art on canvas, on paper and in book form, was born out of her interest in classical literature. In the past couple of years, while formulating her Seoul exhibition, she was reading the Allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic, which is about our perception of the world and how that impacts our understanding of and search for the truth.