Momus and Art Metropole present the launch of Minh Nguyen’s new book Memorial Park: Revisiting Vietnam (Art Metropole and Wendy’s Subway, 2025). The event will feature the author in conversation with Tiana Reid about the book, writing about art to write about place, writing from the personal as a position in the world, and killing the academic in your head to make better sentences.
About the book:
Fifty years after the Fall of Saigon and twenty years after her family’s emigration to America, Minh Nguyen returns to her native Vietnam to find out what’s left of the old revolutionary project. In Memorial Park, a collection of essays pairing travelogue and criticism, Nguyen finds relics of proletarian romance and vestiges of totalitarian control amid an evermore corporatized society. Along the way, she considers how contemporary artspeak confuses state censors, the rise of luxury “Smart Cities” as they supplant socialist housing complexes, and the grip of nostalgia on the diaspora.
About Art Metropole:
Art Metropole is a non-profit artist-run centre that publishes, promotes, exhibits, archives, and distributes artists’ books, multiples, and related media. Art Metropole produces exhibitions, talks, readings, and other programs that highlight artists who make books and other artworks that can be widely circulated.This talk was recorded and is available as an episode of Momus: The Podcast.
