NEW YORK, NY.- The Cooper Union Library presents an exhibition by Tammy Nguyen, a 2007 alumna of The Cooper Union School of Art, featuring her series of artists books, A Comedy for Mortals. This is the first public exhibition of Nguyen’s latest Paradiso book, and the first time the complete trilogy has been shown together. A Comedy for Mortals will be on view in the Library’s atrium through October 10, 2025.
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy serves as a framework for Nguyen’s examination of the history of the Cold War and relations between the United States and other countries, particularly those in the Non-Aligned Movement. Regional histories and events are used to illustrate the neocolonial exploitation of Asian and African countries by Western powers. The Vietnam War, the space race, nuclear testing, the Cuban missile crisis, the 1955 Bandung Conference, India-China border conflicts, and the Congolese independence movement and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, are brought together in complex, collaged portraits that explore Nguyen’s ongoing ethical and philosophical interests.
Nguyen’s work combines sculptural elements with screen-prints, handset type, and hand-made and hand-marbled papers. The Inferno (2023) includes nine books, corresponding to Dante’s nine circles of Hell. Displayed in the Library are three titles from that group: A Welter of Language, Snake in the Grass, and Open Eyes. In Mine, Purgatory (2024), Nguyen combines seven accordion-fold books in a sculptural stack referencing “Mount Purgatory” from Dante’s text. Rising from a reproduction cast of a dinosaur footprint (a reference to Godzilla, created in this period as a metaphor for nuclear catastrophe), these books continue the exploration of Cold War themes such as the environmental damage around the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, and the Bandung Conference.
Tammy Nguyen’s artist book exploring Dante’s Paradiso is inspired by the idea that Dante’s ascent into the celestial heavens is a journey of expanding knowledge, where learning is like eating the “bread of angels”. As in her exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, Nguyen compares Dante’s travels through the heavens to mankind’s race to space and the atomic age. Enclosed in a box, this artist book opens up in 11 codices which are all chapters representing the 11 destinations in Dante’s Paradiso from Earth to Jupiter and to the Empyrean. To “read” each section, viewers must use an elliptical mirror which makes the content legible through reflection. Stories about the Apollo 11 mission, Eisenhower’s farewell address, the Cuban Missile crisis, and much more are revealed through the orbital mirror. These consequential anecdotes from history are paired with verses from Paradiso, which Nguyen has rearranged into concrete poetry.
The Inferno and Purgatorio books have previously been shown at exhibitions in Seoul and London, in 2023 and 2024. The latest book was made in conjunction with Nguyen’s large-scale paintings and prints on display concurrently at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in Chelsea (June 5 to August 15).
Tammy Nguyen (b. 1984, San Francisco, CA, based in Easton, CT) is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, printmaking, and book making. Nguyen received a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union in 2007 and a Fulbright scholarship to study lacquer painting in Vietnam in 2008. Since earning her M.F.A. from Yale in 2013, Nguyen has received numerous awards and had her work exhibited at ICA Boston, MOMA PS1, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Sarasota Art Museum, among many others. She serves on the faculty at Wesleyan University and is represented by Lehmann Maupin.
In addition to her practice in traditional fine arts, Nguyen is the founder of Passenger Pigeon Press. This independent press publishes Martha’s Quarterly and collaborations with other artists and writers. Her books have been exhibited in the libraries of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and MIT, among others. They are held in many notable public collections, including Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University; Center for Book Arts, New York; Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Modern Art Library, New York; New York Public Library; and the Thomas J. Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
To accompany and contextualize Nguyen’s work, The Cooper Union Library also presents a related display, “Responding to Dante: Illustrations, Adaptations, and Subversions of the Divine Comedy.” Drawing from the Library’s rich collections, the exhibit showcases a range of responses to Dante’s epic—from iconic 19th-century editions illustrated by Gustave Doré to bold modern reinterpretations by artists like Tom Phillips and Cooper alumnus Seymour Chwast A’51.
