Artist Book Colophon: Tammy Nguyen
For her Contemporary Project 16 at the Blanton, Tammy Nguyen produced an artist’s book titled Father Ubu at the Department of Aviation. Read the book’s colophon—a publishing term for a statement at the end of a book with information about its production—below.
Father Ubu at the Department of Aviation is an artist book by Tammy Nguyen and an interpretation of the play Father Ubu at the Department of Aviation, which was included in the 1932 book Les Réincarnations du père Ubu [The Reincarnations of Father Ubu], written and illustrated by Georges Rouault, published by Ambroise Vollard. This artist book uses an English translation of the play by Marine Cournet.
Father Ubu at the Department of Aviation is an absurd story featuring Père Ubu, also known as Father Ubu, a buffoonish, greedy tyrant created by the French symbolist writer Alfred Jarry in 1896. In the nineteen-tens to twenties, the art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard authored a series of “Ubu” texts, including this one. This artist book is a viewing apparatus.
In and out you travel between the celestial skies to the sand dunes of earth. You open a box, then another box. As you do, it is heavy and you pull apart walls of sand. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
You are a scientist looking at specimens, you are an investigator making sense of words, you are a child looking up at the stars, you have conquered the world and you look down on it.
This artist book includes 13 discs and one magnifying dome that has been mounted on a circular plexiglass window. One side of the disc includes text that can be read normally and other words that are written backwards. To read those sentences, the discs must be inserted into the space between the dome and the plexiglass so that the text is facing down. Only that way can you see the backwards text reflected onto the bed of plexiglass birds at the base of the object.
All of the text is an edited version of Father Ubu at the Department of Aviation. The story is about Father Ubu, who is the “Undersecretary of the State for Aviation.” The Department of Aviation is concerned about an area of the sky that has been swarmed by the “straw-ass bird”, tiny hummingbird-sized animals that have long tails that are at least half a mile long. Father Ubu states that the most reliable way to deal with these birds is to fly a fleet of airplanes called the Icarian into the chaotic area. These are special planes that purposely crash once they reach a high altitude.
This version of the play includes all of the spoken dialogue. You can read the story by following the discs according to their rubber-stamped numbers. Most of the silent emotions and actions have been omitted, except for disc 13, which shows the text of a small bill from the play. The names of the characters are also omitted. Instead, they are represented in various fonts:
- Father Ubu, the Undersecretary of the State for Aviation: HF Bigcuat
- The Chief of Staff: Charmonman
- The L.P.C.P.A (Leader of the Parliamentary Caucus for the Protection of Aviation): Roboto Slab Bold
- Members of the P.C.P.A.: Roboto Slab Bold
- Someone: Newspaper Publisher Oblique JNL
- The Barber: Newspaper Publisher Oblique JNL
- The Small Trader of Green Sauce: Newspaper Publisher Oblique JNL
- Several Voices: Newspaper Publisher Oblique JNL
- The Chorus of Representatives and Senators: Newspaper Publisher Oblique JNL
All of the dialogue has been silkscreened on vintage polar graph paper, which notes the hours of the day if one wanted to use the circular grid to visualize data that repeats daily. They were glued to black matboard.
The other side of the disc features tangled imagery made with silkscreen and marbled black Stonehenge paper which was also laser cut.
Are they the straw-ass birds? Are they planes?
There are stars.
But look closer, are they stars?
They are butterflies that range from black to blue to yellow. You can only see that they are what they are after seeing them under the magnifying dome.
As you look at the stars that are butterflies, are you also flying closer to the sun?
Icarus, where are you?
The imagery on the book cloth and wrapping paper was made with the sun. Gold Asahi bookcloth and BFK gray paper were coated with cyanotype liquid and exposed with local plants in the sun. Then they were silkscreen printed, and sometimes the plants that were used in the cyanotypes were then used as spray paint masks.
Jade/PVA glue, spray glue, and buffer mount are the adhesives used.
Lila Doromal, Holly Greene, and Chance Lockard all helped Tammy Nguyen produce this artist book. Tammy was the principal craftsperson in making this object. Everyone helped with the construction, Holly did the paper marbling, and Chance silkscreened on the discs. The artwork was a vision by the artist who wanted to figure out a way to place you—the reader—below and above the cosmos.
Image Credit: Tammy Nguyen, Father Ubu at the Department of Aviation, 2025, artist’s book, gold asahi bookcloth, BFK gray paper, mulberry paper, marbled black Stonehenge paper, black matboard, vintage graph paper, millboard, mirrored plexiglass, sandpaper, spray paint, cyanotype printing, screen printing, laser cutting, Jade/PVA glue, spray glue, buffer mount, butterfly wings, and a magnifying lens, 21.5 × 21. 5 in. (closed), 43.5 × 43.5 in. (open), edition of two. Photo by Studio Kukla.
Contemporary Project 16: Tammy Nguyen is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art.
Support for this exhibition at the Blanton is provided in part by Ellen Berman.
