Watch this special conversation between artist Pipo Nguyen-duy and AIPAD Member Brian Paul Clamp of CLAMP, where they will discuss the exhibition AsSimulation.
From 1995 – 1998, Nguyen-duy worked on his series “AsSimulation”—what he describes as a tragic comedy dealing with race, sex, and gender with respect to cultural assimilation. These staged black-and-white selfportrait photographs utilize traditional Asian theatrical and visual language to imitate and interpret Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculpture.
The artist states: “’AsSimulation’ uses the visual language of one culture to simulate that of another—an artistic assimilation analogous to the simulation in cultural assimilation. However, the self-conscious artifice serves only to highlight the artificiality inherent in the process of assimilation. ‘AsSimulation’ is thus an acknowledgement of a culturally ‘inbetween’ place, where one belongs to both cultures, yet at the same time neither.”
Nguyen-duy has has received many awards and grants including a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography; a National Endowment for the the Arts grant; an En Foco Grant; a Professional Development Grant from the College Arts Association, among many other honors. The artist has lectured widely and his work is part of many public collections in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He served as a Professor of Studio Art and Photography at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, for over two decades.