In works like Among the Disquiet (2024) and The Specter of Ancestors Becoming (2019), the artist works directly with diasporic communities, weaving together historical facts and personal anecdotes to illuminate the enduring, multigenerational trauma of colonial warfare. Whether focusing on multiple generations of Vietnamese families in New Orleans or the history of Senegalese soldiers in the First Indochina War, Nguyen empowers members of these communities to be active participants in creating his films. With the Vietnamese-Senegalese community in Dakar, Nguyen asked them to write and enact imagined conversations with their elders, which became three scenes central to The Spectre of Ancestors Becoming. “People have a need to share their stories. These stories are oftentimes forgotten stories, unheard of stories, stories erased by the dominant narrative,” says the artist. “So, the challenge is just to be open to what people want to say.” 

Working across film and sculpture, Nguyen explores how each medium can be used to tell a story, often using both media in a single project. The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon (2022) follows the fictional character of Nguyệt, who transforms unexploded bombshells found across Vietnam into hanging mobiles. The sculptures seen in the film are made by Nguyen himself using salvaged metal from unexploded bombshells, and are exhibited both individually and alongside his films. Sculptures like A Rumble Across the Sky (2022) or Nothing is Ever Lost, Nothing is Ever Gained (2022), which both appear in The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon, become emblems of both trauma and the hope for healing and rehabilitation explored in the film. “On a regular film set, the objects are always these props that support the narrative,” says the artist. “The objects that I make, I consider them actors: they’re agents in the story, they’re protagonists.” Nguyen identifies strategies for remembering lost and forgotten histories, forming intercommunal solidarity, and rehabilitating traumatic histories, sites, and objects through these works of film, sculpture, and installation.