tech
‘I shared a single bed with my mother for three years’: Sung Tieu on her monument to immigrant workers in Venice
At the German pavilion, the artist has re-created the housing estate where she grew up to tell the forgotten history of migrants, including her parents, hired under a socialist agreement between East Germany and Vietnam – then abandoned
TL;DR
- Artist Sung Tieu has recreated the Gehrenseestrasse housing estate, where she grew up, for the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
- The pavilion aims to serve as a monument to the *Vertragsarbeiter* generation, migrant workers hired on fixed-term contracts in East Germany from countries like Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, and Cuba.
- Tieu's work focuses on bureaucracy, state treaties, and the individual experiences of these workers, many of whom were left stranded after the GDR's collapse.
- Tieu herself arrived in East Germany from Vietnam with her mother in 1992, joining her father who had moved there earlier via a bilateral agreement.
- The Gehrenseestrasse complex, where Tieu lived, became a symbol of the abandonment of these workers by the GDR, reunified Germany, and Vietnam.
- Tieu's artistic approach contrasts with previous artists' interventions on the German pavilion, which often involved confronting its Nazi-era history; instead, she adds to it, representing her identity as a migrant who contributed to the country.
- The artist had a minor acting role in the German TV series 'Turkish for Beginners' before focusing on her art career.