Without Full Disclosure

Repressed Stories
Sung Tieu (born 1987 in Hải Dương, Vietnam; lives and works in Berlin) is one of the most exciting voices of her generation. At the age of five, she followed her father, who had been working as a contract worker in the GDR since the late 1980s, to reunified Germany. Drawing from her personal migration experience, Sung Tieu reflects on the ideological, economic, and socio-political structures that shape our societal coexistence. Her focus is on the critical infrastructures that determine who and what gains visibility. Through various media, including installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, text, and sound, as well as found and memory objects, the artist creates minimalist environments.

As part of the awarding of the 9th Promotion Prize for the Rubens Prize, Sung Tieu developed the experimental book project Without Full Disclosure on the topic of fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a controversial method for extracting oil and natural gas. Analyzing millions of database entries from FracFocus, a U.S. platform for fracking operations, Tieu, along with data analyst Gary Allison, examines the chemical components for their potential hazards. Her engagement with the questionable methods and locations, as well as the opaque public communication in the U.S., has been expanded to include current research on potential fracking sites in Germany. The result is over 600 photographs, which she combines with the data in a more than 1000-page artist book to highlight the unpredictable ecological and health consequences of the controversial process.