The Art, Design & Architecture (AD&A) Museum at UC Santa Barbara has launched "Tiffany Chung: indelible traces," a mid-career survey of the Vietnamese American artist and UCSB alumna. The exhibition features over 70 works spanning 25 years, including her signature hand-drawn and embroidered maps, video, and sculptural installations. Curated by Orianna Cacchione, the show highlights Chung’s use of cartography to challenge colonial narratives and document the complexities of forced migration, climate crises, and the movement of botanical organisms across continents.
This exhibition is significant for its exploration of "deep time," situating human history and displacement within a geological and prehistoric framework. By treating maps as palimpsests that combine statistical data with lived experience, Chung reclaims histories erased by official state records. The survey marks a pivotal moment in the artist's career, showcasing her evolution from documenting human conflict to examining the long-term environmental and biodiversity changes caused by human migration and colonization since the Neolithic era.