An­dy Stor­che­negger und Thi My Li­en Nguy­en, Can You See What We Felt

From May 25 to July 5, 2024, the Villa Sträuli cultural center is showing the exhibition "Can You See What We Felt" by the two Winterthur artists Andy Storchenegger and Thi My Lien Nguyen.

"The stranger is only a stranger in a foreign country." Karl Valentin

The "stranger" can take on various forms. Strange is the unknown, which stands in the tension between familiarity and uncanniness, closeness and distance. We often feel strange in another country, but the feeling of being a stranger can catch up with us anywhere: within our own country, our own community, but also within ourselves. Being a stranger is a feeling that connects us all because we all know it.

In Can You See What We Felt, the two artists Thi My Lien Nguyen and Andy Storchenegger deal with these different forms of experiencing strangeness. On the one hand, Storchenegger deals with his experience as a misunderstood outsider in his own country - in other words, with self-strangeness. On the other hand, My Lien gives us an insight into her story, which is shaped by the ambivalence between her life in Western culture and her Vietnamese roots. The artist tells the diasporic story of her family, which is shaped by life "in a foreign country" and a feeling of longing, and explores the understanding of belonging and the feeling of home. 

In this exhibition, two different artistic practices come together to form a dialogue about personal and family experiences with identity and the feeling of belonging, thus providing an insight into the different dimensions of the foreign.