Art Metropole

04 Oct. 2025

Memorial Park Book Launch

Minh Nguyen in Conversation with Tiana Reid

Time

3:00-5:00 PM

Please join us for the launch of Memorial Park: Revisiting Vietnam, a new publication from writer and curator Minh Nguyen. On Saturday October 4, from 3-5 PM, Nguyen will be joined by critic Tiana Reid for a conversation about the book, writing about art to write about place, writing from the personal as a position in the world, and killing the academic in your head to make better sentences.

This event is co-presented by Art Metropole and Momus, as part of the Momus Talks series.

About Memorial Park:
Fifty years after the Fall of Saigon and twenty years after her family’s emigration to America, Minh Nguyen returns to her native Vietnam to find out what’s left of the old revolutionary project. In Memorial Park, a collection of essays pairing travelogue and criticism, Nguyen finds relics of proletarian romance and vestiges of totalitarian control amid an evermore corporatized society. Along the way, she considers how contemporary artspeak confuses state censors, the rise of luxury “Smart Cities” as they supplant socialist housing complexes, and the grip of nostalgia on the diaspora.

Memorial Park is co-published by Art Metropole and Wendy’s Subway and is available beginning September 2025.

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Minh Nguyen is a writer and curator based between New York City and Ho Chi Minh City. She is the curator of Dogma, a collection and gallery in HCMC focused on art and political graphics, and managing editor of e-flux journal. Her art and film criticism has appeared in publications such as e-flux, Art in America, Artforum, Momus, Mousse, and frieze, and she has curated exhibitions and programs at Wing Luke Museum, Northwest Film Forum, King Street Station, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Chicago Cultural Center.

Tiana Reid is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at York University in Toronto. Her research and teaching interests include black literature, gender, sexuality, and labour. Her writing has been published in Aperture, Bookforum, Dissent, Frieze, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She also co-edits the magazine Pinko.

Momus (est. 2014) is an independent online platform for art writing and criticism committed to a model of discourse that is accessible, plural, and rigorous. Our activities encompass publishing, a podcast, and mentorship programs including residencies and fellowships. Momus is headquartered in Montreal with staff, contributors, and collaborators based internationally.

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