Max Estrella is pleased to present Crossroads of time, the first solo exhibition in Spain by renowned Vietnamese American artist Tiffany Chung. Living and working in both Vietnam and the United States, Chung has developed a research-based, interdisciplinary practice informed by her long-term inquiries into a complex framework of social, political, economic, and environmental processes, entwined in landscape archaeology and historical ecology. Chung materializes her studies into hand-drawn and embroidered maps, paintings, photographs, sculptures, and videos. While much of Chung’s work has unpacked conflict, natural and anthropogenic disasters, displacement, and migration, her recent projects focus on learning about earth’s deep times, prehistoric landscape monumentalization, and ancient global connections through the 3,500-year-old spice trade.

Approaching the global history of the spice trade as a massive fabric, Chung’s research seeks to disentangle and reweave the culinary, economic, and political threads that hold it in place for several millennia. ‘I am interested in looking into spices’ trajectories across time and space through trade routes, recipes, human migrations, linguistic and cultural adaptations, and conflicts.’ To depict the chaotic global spice routes connecting Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, Chung collected data from multiple map sources and used Google Sheets, Google Maps, and QGIS to create the based map. The final spice route map and visual studies of these botanical organism presented in the exhibition are created using the traditional craft of embroidery. ‘This laborious process contemplates on the complexity of the spice trade’s history and the roles it played in shaping globalization through commerce, maritime development, conflict, and colonialism that led to modern capitalism.’ Other works in the project pay particular attention to spices used in Spanish cuisine, acknowledging Spain as a historic crossroads in the global spread of saffron among other spices.

Delving deeper into ancient global connections, Chung’s series of works on paper included in the exhibition is based on her ongoing research of Neolithic circular earthworks (2300-300 BCE) in southeastern Việt Nam and Cambodia, in comparison to the ditched enclosures found in Europe from the Early Neolithic (6000 BCE) to Chalcolithic (3000 BCE), especially in the Iberian Peninsula. Seeking to understand the morphology and usage of these earthworks, Chung traces the almost invisible remains of earthen walls or ditches and pits on overlapping layers of vellum. Through cutting, drawing, and painting, Chung works these delicate pieces to evoke the way in which archaeologists carefully excavate sites to reveal the Earth’s stratigraphic layers. ‘I hope studying the earthwork practices in Asia and Europe can inform us of global interconnections in prehistoric times, similar to the ways in which ancient trade routes and archaeobotanical remains of spices found across the world have proven that globalization process began well before the so-called Age of Exploration in 1400s.’

Unpacking how foods, languages and cultures were exchanged and adapted through the unknown ancient traders shows how migration has been part of the age-old globalization process, interwoven in the culinary, cultural, environmental, socioeconomic, and political shifts throughout history. As issues of displacement and migration have also been central to Chung’s practice, the artist recognizes the importance of taking control of the narrative, as forced migration is often stigmatized in a world saturated with images of conflicts and violence. In the gallery’s final room, visitors encounter an adaptation of the project Rise into the Atmosphere, currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art. The project aims to shift people’s view of places known as ‘conflict zones’ and challenge the social stigma associated with refugees, highlighting peoples’ agency and reminding us of the beauty, fortitude, hope, and humanity buried underneath the inhumanity in such places.

Encapsulating the complexity of personal and cultural memories, this project comprises two works: an immersive audio installation, Composition X (2022; 20 minutes), and its corresponding visualization, Poetic landscapes remembered (2023). Composition X intertwines sound, music, and poetry created in collaboration with 27 participants from around the world, inspired by their memories of home and/or the experience of displacement. In Poetic Landscapes Remembered, Chung investigates the invisible sonic fields of Composition X, using 3D animation software to shape and translate its sound frequencies into a landscape video, distilling selected frames into printed elements that form a collage of textures and patterns. As visitors move through the space surrounded by these landscapes and sounds, they traverse a sensorial, evocative, and immersive terrain—exploring the poetic, sonic, and visual possibilities rooted in the memories of others, and possibly of themselves.

With Crossroads of time, Tiffany Chung creates a multisensory project that deepens her examination of the intricate relationships between humans, nature, and the built environments. Incorporating pivotal temporal aspects into the act of mapping, Chung continues her profound exploration of geopolitics, socioeconomic development, and spatial transformation in relation to history and cultural memory, marking critical shifts in historical narratives.

Tiffany Chung has exhibited at museums and biennials worldwide including the 56th Venice Biennale, MoMA (NY), British Museum (UK), Nobel Peace Center (Norway), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (Germany), Louisiana MoMA & SMK (Denmark), Sharjah Biennale (UAE), XIII Biennial de Cuenca (Ecuador), Sydney Biennale (Australia) and Gwangju Biennale (Korea). Chung’s exhibition Rise into the atmosphere is on view at Dallas Museum of Art and her scale model of a floating village included in Breath(e): toward climate and social justice at Hammer Museum, part of 2024 Getty’s PST Art. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction presented Chung’s floating village as an adaptation recommendation in the 2024 Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. Her commemorative earthwork, For the living, part of Beyond granite: pulling together exhibition, was installed adjacent to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the National Mall (DC, 2023). In 2019, Chung presented her exhibition Vietnam, past is prologue at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Chung is an inaugural fellow of KAVAH Fermata Fellowship at the University of Chicago. She was a RITM’s Mellon Arts & Practitioner fellow at Yale University (2021) and a recipient of Asia Society’s Art Game Changer Award (2020) and Sharjah Biennial Artist Prize (2013).