Artist Talk | Sung Tieu

Recent winner of the 2024 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research and premiering her first solo exhibition in Canada, Tieu will speak to her exhibition Civic Floor, on view at our Centennial location until June 1st. Drawing upon extensive research, Sung Tieu produces works of sculpture, drawing, text and sound. Her work explores questions of governance, civic responsibility and justice, and analyzes mechanisms of state control. Her research ventures into the quiet violence of bureaucratic systems in particular and how these systems impact people psychologically and emotionally. Her work has itself sometimes taken the form of reconstructions of sites of bureaucratic control and surveillance, even referencing her personal experiences with various administrative apparatuses.     

Sung Tieu (b.1987, Hai Duong, Vietnam) lives and works in Berlin. She has held solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bonn; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2021); Nottingham Contemporary; and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020). Her work was included in the 34th Bienal de São Paulo and has been exhibited at Museion, Bolzano; Kunsthalle Basel (2021); Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt; GAMeC Museum, Bergamo; and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2020). Tieu is the recipient of the Frieze Artist Award 2021 and the 2021 ars viva Prize. She also received the audience award for the 2021 Preis der Nationalgalerie, Berlin.     Civic Floor is produced in partnership with Luxembourg -Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and Southern Alberta Art Gallery