Tuan Andrew Nguyen: Sacred Forest / Rừng Thiêng at Norr Cohan

Norr Cohan presents new work by Tuan Andrew Nguyen in Sacred Forest / Rừng Thiêng, on view from October 30 through December 19, 2026, across its 48 and 52 Walker Street spaces in Tribeca. It is the artist's fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, and it sets his film work beside a long-running sculptural practice: turning material remnants of war into objects of healing.

Visitors first walk into a suspended kinetic installation of mobiles that mimic a forest. Each is forged from reclaimed 57mm artillery shells from Quảng Trị province in central Vietnam and tuned to a resonant frequency. Their tones travel through the gallery, evoking both the movement of the trees and the unseen forces that still shape the landscape.

A separate room holds Tiger Mountain (2026), a sculpture over 3.5 meters tall whose arches recall the peaks of Quảng Trị, just south of the former Demilitarized Zone. U.S. Marines used peaks such as Tiger Tooth Mountain (Động Voi Mẹp) as outposts during the Vietnam War; long before that, the jungles sheltered wild tigers revered as Chúa Sơn Lâm, Lord of the Forest. Three demined bomb casings, polished to a mirror finish, hang from the arches as bells tuned to 432 Hz in collaboration with sound healers. Tiger Tooth (2026) carries a single bell and takes its title from the Marine outpost. Beyond them hangs Fire Tops (2026), a wall-mounted tondo 240 centimeters across, made of more than 3,000 small discs rolled and pounded from artillery shell casings. Its scaled surface recalls dragon armor, and Nguyen's handling of oxidation and patina yields turquoise and umber tones broken by flashes of fluorescent safety orange.

At the center is the premiere of the film Sacred Forest / Rừng Thiêng (2026), a single-channel 4K video installation with 5.1 surround sound. It is set in Đakrông, a mountainous area of Quảng Trị where wartime legacies remain in the ground and Indigenous spiritual beliefs shape how people relate to nature. The cast comes from the Bru-Vân Kiều community. The story follows Khuyên, an eight-year-old whose parents risk their lives clearing unexploded bombs from the forest. Suspended between life and death, she is guided by a spirit in the form of the saola, the critically endangered "Asian unicorn," into a world where human and animal, living and dead, memory and myth blur together. A Bru-Vân Kiều ensemble performs the music on handmade traditional instruments, recorded on location.

The guardian spirit also appears as a marble saola head with horns forged from brass UXOs, accompanied by river stones that bring the film's landscape into the room. Together, film and sculpture form one environment in which remembrance becomes a way of listening for what remains in the ground, in songs passed between generations, and in beings now vanishing.