Investigating shifting economies within the use of toxins in past and contemporary Asia, Memory Dispute captures a remote rainforest in central Vietnam, an area heavily attacked by napalm during the Vietnamese American war. Ghostly images of an ecosystem now irrevocably altered become a metaphorical study when contrasted with captions meticulously documenting the process of a skin whitening treatment prevalent in Asia. An acid fluid is applied onto the body to separate two skin layers, allowing the first layer of skin to be entirely peeled off. Mapping the disparate and converging lines between napalm and that of an acid skin peel, Tieu traces how rapid economic growth, communication, and cultural exchange alter subjecthood in contemporary Vietnam.

Sung Tieu’s work operates at the intersection of her personal experiences, global history, and cultural incursions of dematerialised art traditions. Her practice addresses Post-Cold War histories and the diasporic experience of unfixed temporal and spatial certainties. Through her lens, she upsets the status of truth and foregrounds the ways evidence is manipulated to serve socio-political agendas and reinforce imperialist violence of physical and psychological nature.