Dark Lab is pleased to present A Silence So Loud an installation featuring works by artists Tuan Andrew Nguyen,Johann Diedrick, Jeremy Dennis, and Sim Chi Yin on view at Tiger Strikes Asteroid (TSA-NY) in Brooklyn, New York, co-curated by Tao Leigh Goffe and Cecile Chong. Part of the curatorial vision of the two NYC-based artists who collaborate under the name Broken China, the group show is the first of an ongoing series of multi-sensorial activations on the topic of what colonialism fractures. The second activation in the series will take place by invitation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the third at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica (May 2025). Founded to explore histories fragmented under colonialism, the creative practice Broken China allows the two to linger on the texture and materiality of art that engages with archival process. The gallery exhibition threads together military histories of Shinnecock Nation, Jamaica, British Malaya, Morocco, and Vietnam collectively addressing the weight of imperial violence, what is left unsaid, and the ethics of who that disinherits. There is a silence so loud that it keeps secrets from the future. Challenging the dominant myths of U.S., French and British empires, the artists disturb what has become buried over the generations. What, they ask, does silence communicate?

Inspired by the poetics of Nguyen’s video installation Because No One Living Will Listen, which explores wounded familial intimacies between North Africa and Southeast Asia, the show is structured around the resonance of letter writing in the diaspora, and the potential speculative power of the epistolary form to heal. As Jamaican novelist Marlon James writes, “The dead are always talking, and sometimes the living hear.” The four artists use text, photography, sonic sculpture, and video, to not only hear but tune into the rebellious lower frequencies of ongoing battles for sovereignty.

Sonic Activation: Sunday, April 13, 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Culinary Intervention: In collaboration with Oscar León Bernal (La Lonchería)
Curatorial Lecture: Sonic Rituals, Ancestral Frequencies. On Zoom, date TBA

Visit www.darklaboratory.com for more information.

TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN (b.1976, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) and his family emigrated as refugees to the United States in 1979. Nguyen graduated from the Fine Art program at University of California, Irvine in 1999 and received an MFA from The California Institute of the Arts in 2004. His artwork explores the power of storytelling through sculpture and video and has been the subject of solo presentations at the New Museum (2023); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2024); and the Smithsonian Art Museum (2024). Both community engaged and research driven, Nguyen taps into inherited histories and counter memories of war. He lives and works between Ho Chi Minh City and Los Angeles.

JOHANN DIEDRICK (b.1987, Plantation, Florida) was born to Jamaican parents in the United States who inspired in him a passion for the mechanics and theory of sound technologies.  His sonic sculptures are adaptive and spatially engaged. Diedrick graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, and NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2013. He is a Just Tech Fellow (2023-2025) and has just been the subject of a solo exhibition at  Fridman Gallery, New York (2025). Diedrick is also the founder of A Quiet Life, a sonic engineering and research studio that designs and builds audio-related software and hardware products for revealing new sonic possibilities off the grid. He lives and works in New York.

JEREMY DENNIS (b.1990, Southampton, New York) is a contemporary fine art photographer, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, and is the lead artist and founder of the non-profit Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc. located on the Shinnecock Reservation. In his work, he explores Indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation. Dennis holds a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University, NY and an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA. Jeremy is a recipient of the Dreamstarter Gold grant and Art Matters Foundation Fellowship. He lives and works in Southampton, New York, on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation.

SIM CHI YIN (b.1978, Singapore) is an artist whose research-based practice uses artistic and archival interventions to contest and complicate historiographies and colonial narratives of British Malaya’s forgotten war. She works across photography, film, installation, performance, and book-making. She participated in the 60th Venice Biennale (2024) and has exhibited at the Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023); and the Barbican, London (2023). She was an artist fellow in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (2022-2023), received her PhD in War Studies from King’s College London (2025), and bachelor’s (2001) and master’s degrees (2000) from the London School of Economics. She lives and works in Berlin. 

About Dark Laboratory

Founded in 2020, the Dark Lab is a climate research organization and design studio that centers climate and race. Expanding a galaxy of projects on Black and Indigenous futures, the lab’s philosophy is inspired by the ethos of Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark (1993). We imagine the Western hemisphere as a haunted house founded on stolen land and built through the labor of stolen lives. Theorists and storytellers center the study of race and ecologies, using immersive technologies and curatorial strategies, to produce solutions towards tackling climate crisis and racial injustice.

Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York

Is an artist-run gallery featuring mainly work by underrepresented artists from all career stages, it offers new contexts for the work of mid-career and established artists.  A 501c3, TSA has five locations across the United States: Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Greenville, SC, and New York.  Founded in 2009, the gallery has shown over 2000 artists in over 400 exhibitions and projects. Shows have been featured in numerous print and online publications including The New York Times, ArtForum, Art F City, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, Whitehot Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the artblog, WHYY, Sculpture Magazine, Sixty Inches From Center, Chicago Gallery News, LA Weekly, Two Coats of Paint, Artinfo, and Artnet News.

 Broken China

Creative directors of A Silence So Loud, Tao Leigh Goffe and Cecile Chong began collaborating creatively in 2022. Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between her native London and New York. Her art explores themes of her African and Chinese heritage at the crosscurrents of the Black Pacific and Chinese Atlantic. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Dark Laboratory and author of a book by the same title published in 2025 by Doubleday. She received her AB from Princeton University and PhD from Yale University. Her work has been supported by major grants from the Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Chong was born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and grew up in Quito and Macau. She is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture, installation, public art, layering materials, identities, histories, and languages. Chong is one of the co-founders of the collective Asianish and has been a co-director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid since 2020.  Her public art installation EL DORADO – The New Forty Niners was installed in each of the five boroughs of New York City (2017-2022). She received an MFA from Parsons, an MA in education from Hunter College, and a BA in Studio Art from Queens College.

The curators extend special thanks to Yale University for co-sponsorship. In addition, gratitude is due to James Cohan Gallery, Zilberman Gallery, Ma’s House, the Brooklyn Rail, Cody Moy, Onye Anahtou,  Andrea Chung, Ana Paulina Lee, Oscar León Bernal, Romil Chouhan, Ryan Behroozi, Tie Jojima (Phillips Collection), Raul Zbengchi (NEW INC). For their labor and research thanks to the curatorial assistants Arianna Qianru James (University of Pennsylvania) and Mónica Ramírez Bernal (Columbia University) who directed the team of curatorial interns Marinella Ferrari-Bridges (Hunter College, CUNY), Mercuri Lam (Yale), Chris Shia (Yale), Nour Darragi (Yale), and Kamini Purushothaman (Yale).

 Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is situated on the unceded land of the Lenape people, the original stewards of this territory. We recognize the enduring relationship that the Lenape have with this land, as well as the ongoing presence and resilience of Indigenous communities in New York City in the far future.

We honor the histories, traditions, and cultures of the Lenape and Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. As an arts space, we commit to fostering dialogue, amplifying underrepresented voices, and supporting the work of Native artists and communities.

This acknowledgment is a step toward deeper understanding and responsibility. We encourage all who visit our space to reflect on their relationship to this land and to engage with the history that shapes our shared present.