Passenger Pigeon Press collaborates with artists working in all disciplines who pursue paths that are not popularized by the mainstream.
Passenger Pigeon Press x KAAREM
We recently collaborated with our friends at KAAREM, a fashion platform dedicated to craft, construction, and quality. We uniquely love their way of forming garments with respect to folds and gravity. This sketchbook includes several folding matrixes which can be used as pockets for safe keeps and what-nots. It was made for the occasion of QUE, KAAREM’s premiere boutique in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam.
This sketchbook is currently available at QUE and will be available soon for markets outside of Vietnam.
Passenger Pigeon Press is proud to present Cheat Codes, a solo show by the winner of our Open Call for Collaborations 2018, Hà Ninh Pham, as well as the release of our collaborative book, II.[interpretation 1].
In the spring of 2018, Passenger Pigeon Press held our first open call for collaborations. We wanted to expand beyond what we had conceived thus far in new and exciting ways; of the nearly 200 applicants, Hà Ninh stood out as a brilliant, nuanced thinker whose proposal for a solo show and an artbook collaboration both resonated with the work we had already produced and brought completely new ways of thinking to our table.
WHEN: The opening of Cheat Codes is Saturday, June 22nd, 6-9pm; the show will remain up until July 3rd, and the gallery will be open by appointment.
WHERE: FRONT art space
For any inquiries please contact: tea@passengerpigeonpress.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cheat Codes
Cheat Codes is the first show of Hà Ninh’s long term drawing project My Land, which he has been working on since 2017. In the body of work for My Land, Hà Ninh presents an imaginary world about which we are given copious amounts of meticulous information that is precise and meaningful, yet nothing in the drawings relate to any actual place or thing that is recognizable to the viewer. My Land currently has two ways of access as presented in Cheat Codes. The first is [mothermap], a large work on paper in graphite and acrylic, which acts as a key to understanding the map system and is remade every year as the project grows. Like a chessboard, it uses an 8x8 grid system, coordinated on one side from 1 to 8 and the other from A to H. Each of these 64 space units leads to more local maps, other works on paper that Hà Ninh presents in Cheat Codes, becoming deeper spatial explorations of the land. In this way, the system of My Land supports an infinite unfolding of space.
Alongside the works that belong to the [mothermap], Passenger Pigeon Press is proud to present II.[interpretation 1], our collaborative artbook with Hà Ninh and the second way to access My Land as presented in Cheat Codes. II.[interpretation 1] is a map that Hà Ninh produces to further explore the concept of My Land, but in a messier, less structured way than in [mothermap]. In II.[interpretation 1], the information is layered rather than ordered as it is in the works on paper on the walls; the form of the book itself represents the sky folded in on the land, and the information Hà Ninh draws does not follow the strict grid structure of [mothermap] and the other works on paper in Cheat Codes. II.[interpretation 1] is another way for the reader to understand and dissect the structures that Hà Ninh builds in My Land.
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Hà Ninh Pham (born 1991) is an artist from Hanoi, Vietnam, who works primarily in drawing and sculpture. His work explores the way in which we construct an understanding of a territory from afar. Ha Ninh Pham earned his MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and his BA from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts. He received the Silver Medal for Young Talents of Vietnamese Fine Arts Universities in 2015 and the Murray Dessner Travel Award in 2018. Hà Ninh has been in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo, Wassaic Project, and Marble House Project. His work has been shown in Hanoi, Philadelphia, and New York, and will be included in the New American Paintings issue 141. He will have a two-person show with Tammy Nguyen curated by Zoe Butt this August at the Factory Center for Contemporary Arts in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Patricia Nguyen
Book of Shadows:
Building in Search of Forever
Hot-stamp and photocopy on various paper
with candles and matches
5.5” x 4” x 0.5”
This is a box of pictures, data, poems, and memos from Vietnamese refugee camps with new poetry by Patricia Nguyen. The candle can be lit to create shadows from the past.
Rituals of faith
we leap out to sea.
rock and sway, crick, rock and sway, crick, rock
and sway, crick, rock and sway, crick…
in the hold
we inhale
our last gasps for air
in the hold
we exhale
a prayer for life
2 days
8 days
30 days
drift
until we land
somewhere across the water
nammoadidaphat
nammoadidaphat
nammoadidaphat
Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She has a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. Her research and performance work examines critical refugee studies, political economy, oral histories, inherited trauma, torture, and nation-building in the United States and Vietnam. She is co-founder and executive director of Axis Lab, a community centered art, food, and design studio based in Uptown, Chicago that focuses on equitable development for the Southeast Asian Community.
Genevieve Erin O'Brien
Seasonal Ruminations
on Love
Drum-leaf book, digital print and letterpress, hot-stamped cover with handset type
6.5" x 5.5"
Seasonal Ruminations on Love is a collaboration between artists Genevieve Erin O'Brien and Tammy Nguyen. The book incorporates O'brien's recipes for various foods made for different "seasons" of love: Heartbreak, Winter, Seduction, and Monsoon Season. Nguyen took O'brien's writing and interpreted through design inspired by menus and cookbooks from Vietnam.
Genevieve Erin O'Brien is a Queer mixed race Vietnamese/Irish/German/American woman. She is an artist, a filmmaker, an organizer, a cook/private chef, and an educator who lives and works in Los Angeles. O'Brien has spent 20+ years working with and organizing in communities for social justice. She was a founding member of Arts In Action, a Los Angeles political arts collective. She holds an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. O'Brien was a Fulbright Fellow in Vietnam, a recipient of the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles and Center for Cultural Innovation's Creative Economic Development Fund. In 2016 she went to Hanoi, Vietnam as a US Dept. of State/ZERO1 American Arts Incubator Artist for a project highlighting LGBTQ visibility and equality. Her newest work More Than Love on the Horizon: West Coast Remix and Sugar Rebels were recently commissioned and presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.
Kenny Rivero
Mojiganga
with a poem by Rocio Peña
Digital and hand-set type letterpress printed pamphlet sewn book with a hard cover and soft spine
7.25" x 4.25"
Mojiganga, pronounced mo-hee-gahn-gah, is a Spanish word. In a dictionary, the first definition of it reads: Fiesta en la que los participantes llevaban disfraces o máscaras grotescas, especialmente de animales. In English, this translates to: Party in which the participants wear disguises or grotesque masks, especially of animals.
In this artist book, Kenny Rivero wanted to make a quiet book that would allow himself to see the drawings as a viewer. His images are accompanied with the poem When You Were Red by Rocio Peña who described her connection to her family through an object, which the reader later realizes is an old photograph that has aged and thus… tinted red.
Kenny Rivero was born and raised in Washington Heights, New York City. He received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2006 and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2012. He has received numerous awards including the Doonesbury Award, the Robert Schoelkopf Memorial Travel Grant, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. He has exhibited at the Pera Museum in Turkey, the Stedelijk Museum in the Netherlands, the Contemporary Art Museum in St Louis, The Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling in New York City, and El Museo del Barrio in New York City.
Tran Minh Duc
Welcome (To) The United States of America; We share Happiness
Letterpress and foil stamping on found map
4” x 7” closed
22” x 30” open
In this work, Tran Minh Duc intervenes with old found maps of the East-coast to Mid-west sections of the United States. He has folded the map into a booklet format. As the reader opens the book, they are met with pink depictions of Ho Chi Minh and the Statue of Liberty, both similarly represented by a salutary pose. On the back side of Ho Chi Minh is the preamble to the United States’ Declaration of Independence. The back side of the Statue of Liberty is the preamble to the Vietnam’s Proclamation of Independence. Both these sentences could be translations of each other since the Vietnamese statement was partly modeled from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was modeled from the American Declaration of Independence.
Glimmering throughout this map-booklet are grammatically incorrect pink stamps of the phrase, “Happiness to everyone.” In this way, the reader is probed to unfold the entire map where they will find the slogan stamped on every state. Tran Minh Duc frequently uses pink in his work. Pink refers to Agent Pink— the most potent of chemical weapons released by the US Army during the Vietnam War. It is also the color of the Apple Snails’ eggs— an invasive species of snails in Vietnam. Finally, the word for pink is “hong” in Vietnamese, but when translated into Chinese— it means “red.” Tran Minh Duc’s art encompasses performance, photography, collage, video and installation. He has participated in numerous artist-in-residency programs in Japan, Paris France, NYC USA and Myanmar. He currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Ronny Quevedo
The Original Thirteen
Package of 3 prints
Letterpress, hot stamping, and vinyl stickers on various papers
10” x 7” (each)
This package includes a print of an abstract field, an orange sheet of vinyl stickers and a list of rules. Ronny Quevedo invites people to explore this varied edition by placing the stickers onto his field. This collaborative game incorporates James Naismith’s original thirteen rules of basketball. Here, though, Quevedo has altered Naismith’s rules to reflect how basketball players from marginalized communities have changed the rules of the game. Quevedo’s method of altering these rules are inspired by Edouard Glissant’s “Poetics of Relation”, which suggests that peripheral identities have a major impact on what is central or standard. In this spirit, the reader’s sticker-interaction mimes the changing of rules and ultimately culture, over time.
Ronny Quevedo’s artistic practice is an examination of the vernacular languages and aesthetic forms generated by displacement, migration, and resilience. Inspired by his own family history and migration, Quevedo transcribes the graphics of locality, community, and remembered environments directly into his work. He has been exhibited nationally and internationally at The Drawing Center; the Queens Museum; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Emerson Gallery (Germany), amongst others. He is a recipient of a 2017 Blade of Grass Fellowship and 2016 Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists. He has participated in residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Kala Art Institute, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Project Row Houses, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and Lower East Side Printshop.
Didier William
I See You, We All See You
Letterpress print on paper
13" x 8"
"In I See You, We All See You carved eyes make infinite the idea that this is not the only body looking back at the viewer, but all the other bodies that occupy a similar physical space are also looking back. It is a carved wooden panel. Carved eyes adorn the entire bust very similar to a cross contour. The title reminds us that these eyes are not just eyes adoring this particular body, but these are eyes of ancestors, the eyes people dreamt, the eyes of alternate histories, the eyes that populate multiple spaces that have been occupied by this body for infinity. Part of the limitation, part of drawing, part of the graphic sensibility of the work comes from trying to pare down these terms so that the only thing my viewer has to engage with is this figure returning multiple gazes.”
-Didier William
Didier William is originally from Port-au-prince Haiti. He received his BFA in painting from The Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University School of Art. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art, The Fraenkel Gallery, Frederick and Freiser Gallery, and Gallery Schuster in Berlin. He was an artist in residence at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in Brooklyn, NY and has taught at Yale School of Art, Vassar College, Columbia University, and SUNY Purchase. He currently lives and works in Philadelphia PA, where he serves as the Chair of the MFA Program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Meena Hasan
Origin Story: The Eagle Turkey (After Ben Franklin)
Letterpress print on paper
with metal brads
10" x 10"
Originally created for a stop-motion animation, Meena Hasan’s two-dimensional letter-pressed puppet was inspired by an American myth. According to this story, Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey instead of an eagle due to its higher moral character and authentic nativity. This puppet is both a turkey and an eagle and by its moveable parts, you can play with its internal quarrel. It is printed on 2-ply museum board and BFK white 300 gsm. The decorative background paper varies with each edition. Dimensions are 10” x 10”.
Meena Hasan is a visual artist born in 1987 and raised in New York City. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2009 and has exhibited in Ohio, New York City, Rhode Island, Rome, Shanghai, New Haven, CT and the Netherlands. In 2010, she completed the Terna Prize Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Meena graduated from Yale School of Art's Class of 2013 with an MFA in Painting and Printmaking and the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Painting. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.