In the time since Tiffany Chung earned her MFA degree at UCSB in 2000 to now, much has changed with global concerns in her art, including human migration, wartime ripples, and climate change. Add to that the artist's deeply invested interest in the dark aspects of history, combined with her remarkable technical and visual approach, and the result is something unique and powerful.
Chung, who was born in Vietnam in 1969 and based in Ho Chi Minh from 2000 to 2017, now residing in Houston, Texas, has ventured into the international art scene, with shows at the Smithsonian, the Dallas Museum of Art, and around the world. She comes home with quietly potent exhibition Tiffany Chung: indelible traces at the UCSB AD&A Museum, which also turns out to be one of the strongest exhibitions in this space in recent years.
Generous in scale and breadth, the current exhibition in her alma mater's museum, curated by Orianna Cacchione, Deputy Director of the University of Richmond Museums, is Chung’s first comprehensive museum survey, and makes an impression at once bold, intricate, and subtle. Seventy works, in varied media, fill the entire museum footprint and offer a cohesive overview of the artist's vision over the past quarter-century.