Tyrant Star
Diane Severin Nguyen
2019
Filmed entirely in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tyrant Star prompts viewers to consider how cultural touchstones like songs and shared histories are fragmented and woven together in new ways over time. The work unfolds in three chapters, beginning with a view of the metropolis set to Ca Dao, or Vietnamese folk poems, before shifting to an aspiring YouTube star performing a cover of The Sound of Silence and concluding with footage of children at a Ho Chi Minh City orphanage. Although each chapter focuses on different voices and perspectives, they are linked by messages of grief and care that remain unheard or misunderstood and by reminders of pain, isolation, and trauma. Nguyen’s camera captures trash-strewn landscapes, quiet interiors, and fragmented bodies, highlighting subtle movements that suggest our surroundings are alive, swelling with the memories of the past.
Diane Severin Nguyen (1990, Carson, California) works across photography, video, and installation, approaching the photographic moment as one of transformation. Moving beyond documentation, she engages image-making as a moment of tension, shaped by desire, speculation, and material instability. Her video work extends these concerns, examining power, victimhood, and propaganda as forces that shape both cultural and self-image. Nguyen has exhibited her work internationally, in places such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rockbund Art Museum, SculptureCenter, The Renaissance Society, MoMA PS1, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Schinkel Pavilion, Jeu de Paume, the Hammer Museum, and others. Her films have been screened at film festivals such as the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Berlinale. Nguyen was a recipient of the 2023 Guggenheim fellowship and lives and works in New York.