MILAN.- Ordet is now opening The Ruling, the first solo exhibition by Sung Tieu in Italy. Tieu’s practice is grounded in historical and political research, and her installations often feature documentary and fictional elements. In The Ruling, the artist investigates how standardization, measurability and quantifiability are deployed as tools of extraction.

In 1897, during the French colonial rule of Indochina, Governor-General Paul Doumer issued a decree that affected the ancient chǐ measurement units widely prevalent in the region before colonization. This French-initiated reduction, amounting to seven centimeters, was carried out under the pretext of broader efforts to standardize and unify various aspects of cultural life in Indochina while spreading “la civilisation française.” This seemingly minor alteration, which eventually led to the near elimination of the ancient measurement unit, had far-reaching implications, particularly affecting the land taxation and exploitation of the majority of Vietnamese peasants.

The artist has produced 123 wooden rulers engraved with grid patterns, employing the traditional Vietnamese measurement unit known as xích (derived from Chinese: 尺; pinyin: chǐ), which were used to measure land. The rulers, which equal 47 cm in length, and 23.5 mm in width and depth, traverse the rooms of Ordet in a horizontal plane.

Running in parallel with the xích rulers and spanning the equivalent length, the artist has further produced 166 40 cm-long rulers, adopting the altered unit implemented by Doumer following the decree. These are etched with various statistics concerning French colonial rule in Vietnam. For instance, they include data on economic investments in Indochina, as well as the salaries of Vietnamese workers during the era of colonial rule.

The Ruling recalls the intricate interplay between colonial interests, bureaucratic and administrative governance strategies, and their impact as lasting legacies of colonial oppression—revealing the asymmetry between the metric system’s universality and its implementation as a tool of exploitation, capital accumulation, and world trade.

Sung Tieu, b. 1987, Hai Duong, Vietnam, lives and works in Berlin.

The artist’s recent and forthcoming exhibitions include the 14th Shanghai Biennale (2023); MUMA – Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia (2024); Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, USA (2024); Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland (2023); Amant Foundation, New York, USA (2023); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, USA (2023); and MUDAM, Luxembourg (2022).

The production of The Ruling is commissioned by Ordet and MUMA – Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, where it will travel in Spring 2024.

Ordet
Sung Tieu: The Ruling
October 28th, 2023 - December 2nd, 2023