Diane Severin Nguyen: In Her Time

Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) is pleased to present Diane Severin Nguyen’s first institutional solo exhibition in Asia, In Her Time. Known for her kaleidoscopic approach to photography, film, and installation, the artist presents two new immersive installations in this exhibition. Located on the second floor of the museum, the film In Her Time is the newly commissioned work for the exhibition and the artist’s first feature-length film. Occupying the entire third floor is a wall-to-wall installation titled Are you young? It doesn’t matter., which uses programmed lights, remixed sounds from the film, and mirrored reflection to create a sophisticated “time tunnel.” Instead of a catalog, the exhibition narrative will be expanded through a fan-fiction novella by Olivia Kan-Sperling, set to be published in early 2024.

Nguyen’s artistic intervention first began at Hengdian World Studios, the largest film studio in Asia. Known for its vast architectural sets, which span a historical timeline of 5,000 years, Hengdian is a popular destination for filmmakers and tourists who wish to visualize a cohesive national history. The city itself is comprised of a large population of migrant workers who relocate to Hengdian to work as background actors, often with greater aspirations for screen time and stardom.

Riffing on neorealist conventions with subjects performing as themselves, In Her Time follows the journey of a struggling actress named Iris (Li Meixian) as she prepares for her first leading role in a historical war film set during the Nanjing Massacre of 1937. We catch glimpses of Iris from the isolation of her apartment to the generic outskirts of Hengdian City, where she rehearses lines unseen. A car takes her between soundstages and various sets – bamboo forests, a jail, and a village under siege. Confession, rehearsal, and performance are interwoven to paint a conflicted portrait of an artist who must re-enact painful events in order to express her ideal vision of the future.

Diane Severin Nguyen’s In Her Time advances her artistic practice of exploring the relationship between performative media and historical trauma. Set against the authoritarian backdrop of both nationhood and filmmaking itself, the artist questions how our capacity to fantasize about progress may be dependent on our power to resurrect the past. Integrating the nostalgic and revisionist impulses of historical reenactment, Nguyen’s film converges different temporal and spatial realities to relay the drama of finding an authentic self within a pre-determined script.

As Iris’ repetitious lines gradually slip away, they become embodied mantras caught in the circularity of historical production. In a cascading sequence of final scenes, the distinction between Iris’ desires and those of her character dissipates, as does that between victim and perpetrator, leaving the audience to question her revolutionary motives: “If I hadn’t created my own world, I would have died in someone else’s.”

In Her Time (2023) was commissioned and produced by the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, with support from the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. The exhibition is curated by X Zhu-Nowell, Artistic Director of the Rockbund Art Museum.

About the artist
Diane Severin Nguyen works with photography, video, and installation. Through material and sculptural experimentations, Nguyen approaches the photographic moment as one of transformation. The artist is particularly interested in exceeding photography as a mode of documentation and engages with it rather as a set of conditions shaped by desire and speculation. Her video work narrativizes these tensions by examining the histories of power, victimhood, and forms of propaganda that underpin cultural (and self) image-making. She has exhibited her work internationally at institutions such as SculptureCenter, The Renaissance Society, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, MoMA PS1, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Schinkel Pavilion, Jeu du Paume, the Hammer Museum, the 2021 Shanghai Biennial, and others. Her films have been screened at the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Berlinale. Nguyen is a recent recipient of the 2023 Guggenheim fellowship and lives and works in New York.