James Cohan Gallery is based in New York, but the internet is all over the place, and CalArts and UC Irvine grad Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s new video work The Boat People is thus available to watch from anywhere. The online stream is paired with an interview between the artist and noted film theorist and curator May Adadol Ingawanij. Nguyen has a way of seamlessly merging history and myth of east and west into sumptuous film-based works that illuminate and provoke.

As Ingawanij writes, “The Boat People is a fable composed through surprising juxtapositions. The bodies navigating the open seas in a whimsical yellow boat are five scrawny children. They wade ashore a deserted, sun dappled island, wearing marvellous steampunk headdresses…accompanied by a strange, lively, syncopated soundtrack. There is no one else in this place but the children…It is the end of the world.” Streaming now through July 21; vdrome.org.

 

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