Returning With Something,
2022

Working across media, Sung Tieu’s exhibitions meld sculpture, drawing, text, sound and video to investigate the evolving structures and mechanisms of control. Her practice raises questions around equality, belonging and individual sovereignty – often revealing the psychological effects of ideological systems and the politics they engender. Extensive research is set in contrast with an autobiographical query which allows Tieu to simultaneously address the deeply personal as well as the institutionalized structures that frame individual expression and agency. She has examined how social or political control can be imposed through design – be it of office furniture, household goods or bureaucratic paperwork. Mimicking and exploring the present legacy of Modernism – both art historically and more broadly – Tieu reveals it as an organizing force that processes and filters information, often favoring sameness over difference and order over invention.