THE ISLAND

TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN

2019

Filmed entirely on Pulau Bidong, a one-kilometre square island off the coast of Malaysia, The Island interweaves archival footage with a fictional post-apocalyptic narrative. The last man on earth, who escaped forced relocation from the island, finds a United Nations scientists who has washed ashore after the world’s last nuclear battle. Beginning in 1978 Bidong served as a refugee camp for 250,000 people dispossessed and displaced by the Vietnam War, the artist and his family among them. It became the most densely populated place in the world until the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees closed the camp in 1991. Drawing on the islands past to lyrically examine its future, Tuan's short film questions individual relationships to history, trauma, and displacement.

The Island highlights the challenges of isolation, repercussions of state-enforced relocation, and the fundamental tension between remembering and honouring past trauma while not undermining the possibilities of a distinct future. 

Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976, Sai Gon, Viet Nam) is a graduate of the Fine Arts program at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Masters of Fine Arts from The California Institute of the Arts in 2004. A co-founder and board member of Sàn Art, an artist-initiated exhibition space and educational program in Sai Gon, Viet Nam, Tuan has shown in numerous film festivals and international exhibitions, his work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 2006 he initiated The Propeller Group, a platform for collectivity situated between an art collective and an advertising company. Accolades for the group include the main prize at the 2015 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur and a Creative Capital award for their video project Television Commercial for Communism. The Propeller Group has been featured in numerous international exhibitions including The Ungovernables (2012 New Museum Triennial), Made In LA (2012 Los Angeles Biennial), Prospect 3 (New Orleans Triennial 2014), and the Venice Biennale 2015.

- Matthew Hills, Curator/Director, Grenfell Art Gallery

Grenfell Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of Grenfell Campus and Memorial University of Newfoundland.