Gojira (Godzilla)

1954, Ishiro Honda, Japan, 96 min.

Introduced by artist Tammy Nguyen

Godzilla (aka Gojira) is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attacks and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels.

Artist Tammy Nguyen’s work on display in Face of the Future and other projects deal with survival in a post-catastrophic trade war and a post-nuclear existence.

About Cabaret Cinema:Face of the Future

Curated by Rubin Museum fellow and artist Chitra Ganesh, Cabaret Cinema takes its cue from the exhibition Face of the Future, in which emerging artists reimagine how the visual languages of science fiction and fantasy take shape and proliferate around the world through cinema. Each film will be introduced by an artist whose work expands and redefines the aesthetics of science fiction, explored in posters that can be viewed in the Art Lounge gallery just outside the theater.

Chitra Ganesh: Face of the Future is made possible by Rasika and Girish Reddy, Manoj and Rita Singh, Akhoury Foundation, and contributors to the 2018 Exhibitions Fund.

About the Introducer

Tammy Nguyen is a multimedia artist working with geopolitics, science, and less known histories. She received a BFA from the Cooper Union in 2007 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2013. From 2007–2008, Nguyen was a Fulbright Scholar in Vietnam where she studied traditional lacquer painting. She has exhibited at the Leroy Neiman Center, San-Art, the Fine Arts Museum of Ho Chi Minh City, the Bronx Museum, Wave Hill, Carriage Barns Art Center, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, and the Inside-Out Museum. In 2014, Nguyen was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill as well as inclusion in the Bronx AIM program. In 2015, she was selected for the Scholarship for Advanced Studies by the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Her work has been collected by Yale University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MIT Library, and the Museum of Modern Art Library. In the fall of 2016, Nguyen founded Passenger Pigeon Press, an independent press that brings the work of scientists, journalists, creative writers, and visual arts together to create politically nuanced projects.

Recently Nguyen was an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Process Space program, and she is an Asia Delegate for the Carnegie Council.