Tammy Nguyen's Refugee Opera Aria Debuts at Venice Biennale
Artist Tammy Nguyen will premiere an aria from her unfinished opera 'Timaeus and The Teacher' at the Venice Biennale's closing program, blending remixed national anthems with her father's refugee journey to explore nationhood.
Tammy Nguyen will present the foreword aria from her unfinished opera 'Timaeus and The Teacher' at the 61st Venice Biennale's closing program on November 13 and 14. The work uses hybridized national anthems and a personal refugee history to interrogate concepts of nationhood and flight.
Nguyen, an artist and associate professor at Wesleyan University, created the libretto by deconstructing the anthems of so-called 'flags of convenience' nations. "I took the anthems of all the countries in the flags of convenience, extracted various lyrics, and hybridized them arbitrarily for the libretto," she stated. Composer Neely Bruce remixed these anthems into the musical score. The aria, titled Timaeus and The Teacher: Foreword, serves as an introduction to a larger opera that fuses Plato's cosmological theories with the enduring identity questions stemming from the Vietnam War.
The opera is inspired by Nguyen's father's escape from Saigon by boat in 1977. After engine failure in the South China Sea, his vessel was rescued by a Sunoco oil tanker captained by a German Holocaust survivor. "I was really fascinated by what happened at sea, as are many children of refugees from war-torn countries," Nguyen said. The central character, The Teacher, is a young Vietnamese man who taught English to Chinese gold traders before his own flight. Grammy-nominated tenor Brian Vu will perform this role.
Staging and symbolism in Venice
The Venice performance will feature Brian Vu singing while dancers choreographed by Jamal Jackson manipulate a large mix composed of flags. They will configure this fabric into mountain ranges, a ship, the sea, and a cosmological diagram from Plato’s Timaeus. This mix extends from Nguyen's 2024 exhibition 'Timaeus and the Nations' at the Sarasota Art Museum, which featured 46 'flags of convenience'-nations that allow foreign vessels to register for tax benefits.
Nguyen used a Fibonacci sequence to obscure phrases within the libretto, further fragmenting the language of anthems. The set design's circular mix, inspired by Plato's diagram, will be dynamically folded, wrapped, stretched, and compressed by the dancers. This reveals shifting imagery that connects ancient philosophy to a modern refugee journey. The opera was commissioned and produced by Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Broader context at the Biennale
Nguyen's performance is part of the Biennale's final-week program, which features diverse artistic responses to memory and migration. Other scheduled events include a Ouija board gathering led by Hagar Ophir, stories of cultivation and global exchange from Lebanese artists Ziad Antar, Hatem Imam, and Nayla Mabsout, and a meditation on salt as an essential mineral by Nathalie Vairac. Nguyen also has a series of paintings on view at the Biennale's Central Pavilion through November 22.
Nguyen's artistic practice spans paintings, prints, and artist books, often engaging with history, philosophy, and geopolitics. She grew up in San Francisco and studied music from childhood through formal programs. The full opera remains a work in progress. One minute of an opera is an entire operation to produce, so we have a few more years of work ahead, she noted. Nguyen aims to complete the full production by composer Neely Bruce’s 85th birthday in the fall of 2029.
