فير زملر غاليري Sfeir-Semler Gallery

Sung Tieu

Sung Tieu (b. 1987 in Hai Duong, Vietnam)’s work contends with historiography and analyses the transnational movements of both people and objects. Her practice explores the vast and evolving protection and control industries, still rooted in the logic of the Cold War, used to restrict and mould subjects in subsequently globalized capitalism. Informed by her own experience of cultural collision and displacement, her work critically investigates the art-historical legacies of late Modernism. Read more

Using diverse artistic mediums ranging from installation, sound, video, text, sculpture, photography, performance to public interventions, her practice navigates the diasporic experiences of temporal slippage and spatial uncertainty. Within her exhibitions, a sense of dislocation is evoked through a combination of sonic, visual, and textual elements; at the same time, her extensive research on sonic weaponry and sound as medium accentuates the work, demystifying and highlighting their material mechanics. Although based in research, her exhibitions deliberately resist any singular discursive rendering, and instead give rise to layered narrative readings.

Since 2016, Tieu has been engaged in a critical examination of psychological and bureaucratic warfare — their histories and effects—to uncover the socio-political and ideological mechanisms undergirding geo-political agendas. This interest resulted in video and sound installations such as In Cold Print (2020), Song for Unattended Items (2018) and Remote Viewing (2017). In these works, Tieu proposes that the legacy of a Cold War threat continues to propagate—that there is a persistent state of mitigated catastrophe dispersed within and contaminating our everyday realities, the alleviation of which is premised on differentiating signal from noise and the benign from the malignant. In installations such as Zugzwang (2020) and What is your |x|? (2020), and her series Newspapers 1969 - ongoing (2017 - ongoing), Tieu examines the culture of information and its institutionalised dynamics of transmission in our societies—whether through newspaper columns or astrological interpretations.

Apart from her solo practice, Tieu is part of several art collectives, engaging in collaborative, non-autonomous production; among them are TROI OI, East London Cable and Asia Art Activism.

1/6Sung Tieu, Memory Dispute, 2017, video installation, 22‘42“
2/6Sung Tieu, Song for VEB Stern-Radio, 2021, installation, various dimensions
3/6Sung Tieu, What Do You Let Go?, 2021, plastic flower, polished and unpolished stainless steel, 66 × 48 × 5 cm
4/6Sung Tieu, Reverberations, 2023, 3 steel tubes with sound
5/6Sung Tieu, Midair, 2025, GDR sofa, coffee table, armchair, desk, chair, two commodes, ephemera, wire, hooks, dimensions variable
6/6Sung Tieu, French Inferiority, 2025, cotton fabric, 131 × 206 cm, installation view Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland

Selected Press

Gallery Exhibitions

Exhibitions Beyond

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2026

  • Ruin, German Pavilion, La Biennale Di Venezia, Venice, Italy (forthcoming)

2025

  • Bleed, Kunsthalle Bern

  • 1992, 2025, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany

2024

  • One Thousand Times, Kunsthalle Nürnberg

  • Civic Floor, Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada

2023

  • One Thousand Times, Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland

  • Infra-Specter, Amant, New York, USA

  • Civic Floor, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, USA

  • No Jobs, No Country, n.b.k. Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2022

  • Civic floor, MUDAM, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

  • Everything or Nothing, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

2021

  • AUSGEZEICHNET #5 Sung Tieu – Fall, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany

  • Multiboy, Stiftung Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

  • TBC, Stedelijk Commission Amsterdam, Netherlands

2020

  • What is your |x|?, Emalin, London, United Kingdom

  • In Cold Print, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, United Kingdom

  • Zugzwang, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany

2019

  • Park Piece, Fragile, Berlin, Germany

  • Formative Years on Dearth, Parrhesiades, The Yard & Flat Time House, London, United Kingdom

  • Loveless, Piper Keys, London, United Kingdom

2018

  • Song for Unattended Items, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

2017

  • Remote Viewing, Nha San Collective, Hanoi, Vietnam

  • Coral Sea as Rolling Thunder, Art Basel Statements, Basel, Switzerland

  • Memory Dispute, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

2015

  • Emotion Refuge, Micky Schubert, Berlin, Germany

  • Alien Refuge, FIAC Art Fair, Paris, France

  • Subnational Enterprise, Dong Xuan Center & Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin, Germany

2014

  • TROI OI, in various Vietnamese flower shops in Berlin’s subway stations, Berlin, Germany

Selected Group Exhibitions

2026

  • Social Unrest, MATTA gallery, Milan, Italy

  • Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA

  • Studio Visit, Hauser & Wirth for Performance Space New York, New York, USA

  • Rituals of Perception, Inaugural Exhibition of TAF: Tanoto Art Foundation, New Bahru School Hall, Singapore, Singapore

2025

  • Whispers on the Horizon, Taipei Biennial, Taipai, Taiwan

  • to leave a space in which the din of war might die down, NSDOKU: Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, Munich, Germany

  • Cold as Ice. Coldness in Art and Society, Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen, Germany

  • The Shade, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Karantina, Beirut, Lebanon

2024

  • Martin Beck, Sung Tieu: echo*, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria

2023

  • Guest Relations, Jameel Arts Center, Dubai, UAE

  • The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, Germany

  • Assembly. Interventions in Public Space, Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany

  • Systemic Love, Capc - Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France

  • Cry Me A River, Simian, Copenhagen, Denmark

2021

  • Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany

  • Endless Garment 2, X Museum, Beijing, Peoples Republic of China

  • TBC, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

  • TBC, Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover, Germany

  • Though It’s Dark, I Still Sing, curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, 34th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

  • INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland

  • HI-STORYTELLING, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

  • TBC, Antenna Space, Shanghai, Peoples Republic of China

  • For Refusal, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany

  • Politics of the Signifier, Deborah Schamoni, Munich, Germany

2020

  • Listening: Resonant Worlds, Arts Maebashi, Japan

  • Storytelling, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

  • Ars Viva 2021, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany

  • In the Forest, Even the Air Breathes, GAMeC Museum, Bergamo, Italy

  • Paranoia TV, steirischer herbst ‘20, Kleine Zeitung, Graz and Klagenfurt, Austria

  • Magical Soup, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum for Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany

  • Touch, Peles Empire, Berlin, Germany

  • Recession Grimace, Klosterruine, Berlin, Germany

  • Come closer, curated by Tereza Stejskalová & Vít Havránek 1st Matter of Art Biennale, Prague, Czech Republic

  • Nameless. echoes, spectres, hisses, A.I. Gallery, London, United Kingdom

  • REALITY, Tropez, Berlin, Germany

  • Real Time, Seventeen, London, United Kingdom

  • Platform: London, David Zwirner Online, London, United Kingdom

2019

  • We shall survive in the memory of others, Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin, Germany

  • The Season of Cartesian Weeping, with East London Cable, David Roberts Foundation, London, United Kingdom

  • back there, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany

  • The Ghost War, WTF Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand

  • Mercury, Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn, Estonia

  • While I Kiss The Sky, curated by Goschka Gawlik and Arkadiusz Półtorak, Senn Galerie, Vienna, Austria

  • Empty Vase, Vacancy Gallery, Shanghai, Peoples Republic of China

  • Open Studios, Villa Romana, Florence, Italy

  • HybrID, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

  • Deep Sounding - History as multiple narratives, DAAD Galerie, Berlin, Germany

  • S/F Photography, or a Monolith after 200 years, Kayoko Yuki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

  • Artists Use Photography, Praz Delavallade Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA

  • Lifehacks, BQ Gallery, Berlin, Germany

  • A Fear of Monsters, Asia Film Archive, Singapore, Singapore

2018

  • SKY PAINTING, with Cameron Irving, Unit 21, Penarth Centre, London, United Kingdom

  • The Culture Collider, Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow, Poland

  • Diaspora, Ma Homey, Space _31, Berlin, DE UnAuthorised Medium, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Netherlands

  • No War, No Vietnam, Galerie Nord, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany

  • If you need guidance please ask you colleague, Mathias Güntner Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

  • Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

  • First I have to put my face on, Like A Little Disaster, Polignano a Mare, Italy

  • DECREATION, 51zero Film Festival, Whitstable Biennial, Kent, United Kingdom

  • Domestic Detail, Play-Co, Studio Ed Fornieles, London, United Kingdom

  • Die Stelle des Schnitts, film programme, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany

2017

  • DECREATION, 51zero Film Festival, Rochester, United Kingdom

  • DISPLA(Y)CED, Kunstverein Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz and in public spaces, Dresden, Germany

  • Original Fake, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain

  • The Stillness Of A Departure, Polansky Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic

  • Plazoleto, Skyline Plaza, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  • Gender, Identity and Material, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

  • Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

  • Neue Kunst In Hamburg, curated by Rhea Dall, Multiple Box, Hamburg, Germany

2016

  • Park View, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  • Berlin Project Space Festival, Berlin, Germany

  • This Is Your Replacement, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf, Germany

2015

  • W A R II, curated by Adam Carr, Mostyn, Wales, United Kingdom

  • By Boat (Farewell), Gallery José Garcia, Mexico City, Mexico

  • DEEP SKIN, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNOlab), Ontario, USA

  • Micky Schubert, Berlin, Germany

Public Collections

Education

  • Postgraduate Programme, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

  • BFA, Goldsmiths College, University of London, United Kingdom

  • BFA, Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg, Germany