Natural Love is Always Inerrant forms a part of Tammy Nguyen’s reinterpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, embodied in her solo exhibition entitled A Comedy for Mortals: Purgatorio. The centerpiece of a tripartite narrative, Purgatorio follows Inferno and precedes Paradiso in dissecting geopolitical conflicts of the Cold Wars, and centers closely upon moral gray areas of the Grasberg mine in Indonesia. Dante’s expiation in purgatory is reimagined through a contemporary lens in the form of an island suspended in liminal time and space, its occupants trapped as eternal refugees.
At the center of Natural Love is Always Inerrant stands the figure of Christ, his crucifix held tightly as he arrives by boat to the shores of Nguyen’s mythical purgatory, the panel thus split in half, sunset on the left and sunrise on the right. Amidst overlaid imagery and disorienting planes, Nguyen blends the theological with the political, the symbolic with the tangible—Biblical iconography of Bernini angel sculptures, moths, and crosses, interwoven with stamps bearing vestiges of Freeport’s crimes, fighter jets, and the flourishing ferns of Indonesian tropics. Divine redemption is then complicated by history, purgatory tarnished by oppression and ecological loss, and its occupants perpetually betwixt and between.
(Edited from text excerpts provided by Lehmann Maupin)