The Enlightening Art of Thu-Van Tran and Caroline Trucco at MAMAC This Summer

This summer in the South of France, MAMAC (The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice) unveiled Thu-Van Tran’s “We live in the flicker” and Caroline Trucco’s “Oui, mais des mots étendards.” Both are currently on view through October 1.

Curated by Director of MAMAC Hélène Guenin, Tran’s large-scale exhibition marks the artist’s inaugural museum monograph in France, and presents a poetic journey through Franco-Vietnamese culture and the fragility of our natural and spiritual ecosystem. Curated by Rébecca François in collaboration with Palais Lascaris, Trucco’s multisensory show imparts a vivid investigation of West African culture and a search for personal and collective identity.

From her powerful installation at the 2017 Venice Biennale, to holding a coveted place as a 2018 nominee for the Marcel Duchamp Prize, Tran’s mythical creations span film, sculpture, painting, and photography, revealing the mesmerizing evolution of nature through the personal, the political, and the mythological.

The title of the artist’s latest endeavor draws from her own notable series of works which utilized the spirited phrases of Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad’s In the Heart of Darkness (1899-1902) for a collaged interpretation of language and enchantment. The exhibition follows a scintillating sequence of chapters: At dawn, sow; At midday, expose and burn; and At dusk, forget, mutate and narrate. Each invites visitors into a lyrical prism of heritage, suffering, and healing through seared and scarred bodies and natural landscapes, and enlightening sculptures such as the ethereal casts of “weeping” tree trunks.

Born in Nice, Trucco skillfully combines her experience in the conservation of African ethnographic objects at the Ecole Supérieure d'Art d'Avignon with studies in art, anthropology, and scenography, culminating in her embodiment of a passionate storyteller, fusing photography, film, and artifacts to offer a tender narrative of exotism and emancipation. Inspired by creative voices such as Marielle Macé, Édouard Glissant, and Jean Rouch, Trucco experiments with symbolism, politics, and documentation to envelop visitors in a space both historical and fantastical, brimming with emotion. Return to Homeland (2017-2023), a cutting-edge presentation of African objects, statuettes, and masks on steel storage racks, labeled with inventory numbers, spotlights problematic Western display codes and interrogates the means of artifact collection. Trucco’s stimulating works of art deftly lift hidden narratives out of the darkness and into illuminating light.