When the cargo ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last March, it triggered something in multidisciplinary artist Tammy Nguyen. The collapse of the bridge was horrific, killing six maintenance workers and blockading most shipping out of the port of Baltimore for 11 weeks, with the loss of trade costing an estimated $15 million per day. Behind the tragedy, however, lay something intriguing to Nguyen, who has long been fascinated with the concepts of national identity, colonialism and the geopolitics of the 21st century. “Flags of Convenience” is a widespread maritime practice in which a ship’s owners register their merchant ship in a registry of a country other than their own. It’s a loophole in the maritime industry that allows ship owners to skirt the regulations of their own country’s ship register—a Dutch ship, flying the flag of Liberia for instance, would be subjected to less taxes, safety regulations and labor laws than if she was flying a Dutch flag. While the container ship Dali was in fact not flying a flag of convenience, the ship was built, owned and operated out of Singapore—it was an example of a poorly regulated foreign vessel. Mechanical issues had plagued the vessel and the crew, which many have argued to be incompetent, was spread far too thin for the size of the ship.

Questions around the incident abound. Why was this ship so understaffed? Was the mechanical power outage a product of human oversight or administrational disregard? And what does it mean to represent a country? With these thoughts swirling around in her head, Nguyen got to work on her latest exhibition: Timaeus and the Nations, which debuted at the Sarasota Art Museum (SAM) this October. In the exhibition, Nguyen looks to connect two seemingly disparate subjects: the concepts of nationality in a post-colonial world as seen through the maritime practice of flags of convenience and the creation of the universe and pursuit of world order in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus.

Tammy Nguyen (American, born 1984). 2:4:8, A book about the forming and flowing of nations, 2024. Bookcloth, millboard, various colors of mulberry paper, onion skin paper, 27 lb. Hahnemühle Ingres Pa

TAMMY NGUYEN (AMERICAN, BORN 1984). 2:4:8, A BOOK ABOUT THE FORMING AND FLOWING OF NATIONS, 2024. BOOKCLOTH, MILLBOARD, VARIOUS COLORS OF MULBERRY PAPER, ONION SKIN PAPER, 27 LB. HAHNEMüHLE INGRES PA

“The collapse of the bridge really triggered her interest, which has long focused on colonialism, imperialism and how nations are constructed and destinies are interwoven. She started to further look into this system and how in the past 46 nations have participated in this maritime practice. While she’s thinking about the various notions embedded in Plato’s Timaeus, she focuses on several threads of ideas,” says Rangsook Yoon, Senior Curator at SAM and curator of the exhibit. “One is of the demiurge or blind craftsman creating the world and universe following logic, manifested in mathematical divisions and geometric forms like circles, triangles and fractals. She was also very interested in the notion of becoming instead of being, meaning that things constantly change. Thinking about how national identities as borders seem to be collapsing or changing in the margins of our awareness as manifested in this maritime practice.”

The exhibition weaves these ideas together with a collection of all new works. Six paintings and 23 embroidered tapestries are anchored by a sweeping artist book, 2:4:8. Constructed out of hand-marbled mulberry paper on wooden backing, the book characterizes the figure of the Demiurge as a vintage naval uniform, unfolding in three sections, an arm, a torso and a skirt. Inside the book, audiences can take a peek inside Nguyen’s mind: swirling patterns and fractals adorn the pages, mimicking the progression of the soul in Plato’s Timaeus, intermixed with pieces of the national anthems of the 46 nations that participate in flags of convenience and bits of legal documents pertaining to maritime law.

Nguyen’s paintings, for which she is best known, are described by Yoon as a “visual feast.” Ornate, complex and deeply layered, the paintings use caricatures of figures in leadership roles to depict the controlled chaos of the modern world. At first, these concepts might seem too esoteric to grasp, too far of a reach for audiences to connect with. At a closer look, however, one begins to understand the different themes that Nguyen is tying together. Take The Craftsman of Our Fate, for instance. Constructed on paper stretched over wood and gator board panel, the painting uses watercolor, pastel, vinyl paint, silkscreen printing, multiple kinds of stamping and metal leaf to create an abstract collage of fractals, star patterns, numeric symbols and other concepts from the 46 flags of convenience. Within this abstract melody lies a portrait of former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. “The figures in the paintings all emerge from these very densely layered compositions that feature geometric shapes and patterns along with abstract mark making and depictions of flora and fauna. Doing so forces the viewer to first look at her paintings from distance to observe the overall composition, when you get closer, however, you not only see these figures entangled in the lush vegetation and abstract mark making, but you pick up on new details like stars, fractals, insects, ships and more numbers from Plato’s Timaeus,” says Yoon. “We see all of these symbolic motifs and ideas in the paintings that are more fully fleshed out in the artist’s book.”

The final piece of the exhibition, 23 embroidered tapestries, is a newer frontier for Nguyen. While textile work isn’t exactly what Nguyen, who has been lauded for just about every other artistic discipline, is known for, these pieces are essential to completing her vision for the exhibition. Each of the 23 tapestries,one for every two nations that participate in flags of convenience, are divided into three parts. Framing the center of the tapestry, the top and bottom sections are composed of fractalized patterns of the two nation’s flags. Intertwined with these fractalized patterns are the swirling designs of vegetation, crowns, guns, stars and maritime motifs also found in the paintings and artist book, 2:4:8.

In the center section of these tapestries, Nguyen further interrogates the notions of nationhood by featuring a three-line haiku, composed of randomly chosen words from the two nations’ national anthems. After creating the haikus, Nguyen matched corresponding musical notes from the anthems to the extracted words, effectively creating a new anthem for the conjoined nations of each tapestry. The haikus themselves were created with pace and pattern in mind: each haiku follows the 5-7-5 syllabic structure, totalling 17 syllables per stanza. Those 17 syllables were translated into 17 musical notes across 4 measures in a 4/4 time signature. Fitting those 17 notes into 16 beats of music presented a contradiction inherent to the practice of flags of convenience—by sticking a flag of one country onto another country’s ship, what at first may seem out of place can appear as though it was always meant to be. “Originally, Tammy wanted people to imagine hearing the musical notes and lyrics, but she later decided to add audio to the experience. She played the piano and recorded these 15-second long snippets of music to accompany each tapestry,” says Yoon. “These piano recordings are accessible to the visitors by scanning a QR code and if they’d like they can even sing the lyrics, demonstrating that these anthems and flags are all constructions of identity. With the music, she’s showing how these different national anthems are all kind of similar, that they don’t really belong to any nation in particular.”