Works by Alison Nguyen to be presented as part of the group exhibition "The Sunsets were Purple and Red and Yellow and on Fire" at the Kunsthal Mechelen.
Exhibition period: 25 January 2026 - 3 May 2026
Venue: De Garage, Kunsthal Mechelen, Belgium
Exhibition preview: 24 January 2026, 4:00 PM
Curated by Evelyn Simons, "The Sunsets were Purple and Red and Yellow and on Fire" examines how people and communities grapple with the void left behind by futures long lost. Loaded with cultural references spanning multiple temporal and spatial geographies, the works on show explore the collision of personal and collective memories, and ways in which they continue to haunt the present — obstructing our ability to look forward.
Amid hypernormalisation, fake news, polarization, brainrot, state violence, live-streamed atrocities, and the overall devastating realities of our current era, we find ourselves lured into the quicksand of nostalgia — a “desire to live in a future to a past that history sliced off, leaving its scar.” (McKenzie Wark). This pull toward the past takes the form of phantom nostalgia: a desire for something never experienced, or that existed only as a promise, yet which continues to exert a powerful hold on the present. Entangled with hauntology — the persistence of futures that never came to be — this condition produces a pervasive sense of dissociation and alienation.
Text courtesy of the Kunsthal Mechelen.
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Alison Nguyen | "The Sunsets were Purple and Red and Yellow and on Fire", Kunsthal Mechelen
