Sung Tieu (1987, Hai Duong, Vietnam) works in a range of media producing exhibitions that draw upon extensive research. Her works of sculpture, drawing, text and sound consider questions of governance, civic responsibility and justice, analysing mechanisms of state control. Making reference to art history, and in particular to minimalism and the deployment of the grid, they highlight the translation of ideologies within industrial design and architecture and the prevalence of abstraction as an organising force.

Grid form (2022) is composed of three series of engraved plaster plaques that refer to various documents employed in assessing eligibility for immigration to the USA. Three forms which are respectively used to apply for asylum, for refugees to apply for a ‘waiver for grounds of inadmissibility’, and to appeal against deportation are the basis for the wall-based works. Mudam’s collection holds the works that refer to this last type of document. Devoid of textual content and reduced to their lines and boxes, they reproduce only the parts of the form that applicants are invited to complete. The works draw attention to the grid-based design of the documents, the allocation of space on the page and abstracting their compositional elements within a scheme of linear, square and rectangular forms. Milled upon the smooth plaster surface they appear to be inscrutable forms of notation. They allude to the ancient clay and stone tablets that exemplify some of the earliest forms of inscription and which describe the administrative and practical requirements of ancient societies.