DALLAS, TX.- This August, the Dallas Museum of Art unveils a new multimedia installation by artist Tiffany Chung, created for the Museum’s first-floor Concourse mural space. Combining visual and sonic elements, Tiffany Chung: Rise Into the Atmosphere engages with the history and cultural memory of places often defined today by war, upheaval and displacement, inviting 28 contributors from around the world to share their experiences with these forces and their recollections of home. The installation is on view at the DMA from August 4, 2023, through August 3, 2025, and is included in free general admission.

“Tiffany’s powerful installation speaks to a diverse group of audiences, including those from our local communities who have their own experiences with migration,” said Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott Director. “Through our presentations and programming, the Museum seeks to offer new perspectives and illuminate untold stories. It is always a nice moment of symbiosis to partner with an artist whose work perfectly aligns with that ethos—especially someone here in our Texas
community.”

Tiffany Chung (b. 1969, Vietnamese American) is globally noted for her diverse conceptual work and research-driven process that contend with issues of conflict, geopolitical partitioning, spatial transformation, environmental crisis and forced migration in relation to history and cultural memory. By documenting and shining light on hidden histories—the memories and experiences of ordinary people— she seeks to counterbalance narratives produced by the state or dominant in the public sphere.

Continuing this practice, Chung’s DMA installation highlights the fortitude, resilience, wisdom and agency of those who have had to contend with displacement by uplifting their stories and lived experiences.

Tiffany Chung: Rise Into the Atmosphere comprises two new works: an immersive audio installation, Composition X (2022), and its visual counterpart, Poetic Landscapes Remembered (2023). Composition X interweaves sound, music and poetry created by participants from around the world—many of whom have been refugees themselves—drawing from memories of home and the experience of being forcibly uprooted. In Poetic Landscapes Remembered, Chung used 3D animation software to give form and translate the sonic frequencies from Composition X into a landscape video, and then distilled selected frames into printed elements for the mural, resulting in a patchwork of textures and patterns. As visitors proceed through the Concourse, surrounded by Chung’s mural and ambient sound installation, they traverse an evocative, sensorial terrain.

“Tiffany has created an installation that provides a needed antidote to the flat and stereotypical perceptions of displaced peoples and “conflict zones” propagated by mass media. Instead, she offers us a more nuanced and human-oriented perspective and reminds us of the power of music and art to bring back beauty, humanity and hope,” said exhibition curator Vivian Li, The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA.

Tiffany Chung: Rise Into the Atmosphere is created by Tiffany Chung in collaboration with composer Isaac Hernández Campos and media artist Mario Norton, and with Omran Adrah, Jose Antonio Agüero, Ahmad Aljarrah, Julianna Banks, Drishti Bathija, Nipun Bhatnagar, Jose Rodrigo Contreras, Sara Fakhry, Sebastián Izaciga, Robbie Koeck, Nelleke Kuipers, Yuna Lee, Meiling Liu, Ankita Mathew, Yousseff Moustafa, Alliyah Qualls, Renz Ren, Randy Reynolds, Pablo Schuller, Nimrod Schwartz, Aviram Spies, Shankara Srikantan, Manos Stratis, Tala Sukkar, Edwin Toh and Lucas Zapiola.

Chung has been featured in museums and biennials worldwide, including the 56th Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art, the British Museum and the Nobel Peace Center. Chung presented a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2019, and her upcoming installation at the National Mall as part of the Pulling Together exhibition will open to the public on August 18, 2023.

Tiffany Chung: Rise Into the Atmosphere is the sixth iteration of the DMA’s Concourse mural series, which commissions emerging and established contemporary artists to create new, site-responsive work for the public space that functions as the DMA’s main thoroughfare. The series has recently featured work by Guadalupe Rosales, Sandra Cinto and Minerva Cuevas.