JANUARY 16 - FEBRUARY 19, 2025

Exhibition Opening with the Artist
Thursday, January, 16th, 5 - 7 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of A Migratory Memory of Flora and Fauna, a solo exhibition of new mixed media paintings of canvas and silk by artist Lien Truong in SOCO Annex. The gallery will host a public opening reception with the artist on Thursday, January 16th from 5:00 – 7:00 PM. This will be Truong’s first solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery.

In A Migratory Memory of Flora and Fauna, Truong presents new small and large scale works as hybrid representations of flora and fauna. Interested in the connection between sensory experiences of the landscape, Truong states “Cultural producers have long created works impacting how we define notions of homeland. But what about those for whom displacement severs them from that very ground?”

The artist investigates how scent is connected to land. In her studio, a growing olfactory lab with bottles of flowers, spices, and leaves seeping in perfumer’s alcohol create scent to stimulate comforting memories of diasporic gardens and kitchens that ignore geographic boundaries. In the annex, small bottles of scent can be sampled so visitors can participate experientially.

In her work, Truong binds together histories of alchemy, horticulture, and witchcraft. The paintings refer to ways in which we have adorned our bodies through scent and material from the natural world.

The artist reimagines silk fabrics that were once hand painted in Asia, and used to make clothing adorning the bodies of high society in France, Britain, and America. Her incorporation of hand painted silk and fractured interpretations of these textile designs highlight the worldwide textile trade, a centuries-old, entangled narrative of colonization and migration.

As seen in Enchanting Amulets of Mother’s Milk, representations of plants and bodies are fractured alongside painted textiles in oil and on silk. The fabric, enveloped with painted gestures among echoes of water motifs and fluids, signifies the merging and dissolving of the painted bodies.

In A Migratory Memory of Flora and Fauna, Truong harnesses our sense of smell, textile, and the natural world into paintings that connect to landscape and home.

Lien Truong

Liên Truong’s work blends painting with military, textile, food and art histories to form a diasporic, aesthetic language. Her work has been exhibited widely in venues including the National Portrait Gallery; Nasher Museum of Art; S.E.A. Focus, Singapore; Untitled Art Fair; North Carolina Museum of Art; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. Truong was the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award. She has held residencies at the Oakland Museum of California, Jentel Foundation, and the Marble House Project. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Truong immigrated to the US in 1975. She received her MFA from Mills College and is an Associate Professor of Art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.