GBP 30.00
Alekhine's Defence is an artist book by the German-Vietnamese contemporary artist Sung Tieu with an accompanying essay by the English chess grandmaster Raymond Dennis Keene OBE. A conceptual allusion to themes of psychological warfare, cultural displacement, and geopolitics, the title references a chess strategy, metaphorically highlighting Tieu's exploration of strategic defence in personal and political contexts of migration.
The book includes a print reproduction of Alekhine’s Defence: an art installation comprised of 31 pencil drawings on 31 bureaucratic documents. Relating to asylum, naturalization, and residency, each of these uniformly framed documents has been edited by the artist to remove any mention of the country where they were issued. Posing basic biographical questions alongside more subjective requests—“[Provide] factual information about the applicant’s intelligence”—these forms aim to assess the “use value” of each claimant, which is in turn balanced against the possible risks, such as ill health or possible criminal activity, which they pose. On each sheet, Tieu has drawn a move from a historic chess match between a grandmaster and an amateur—suggesting that legal asylum isn’t an objective process, as we’re led to believe by the authorities, but a high-stakes game of strategy and wit.
The installation Alekhine’s Defence (2020) was first exhibited at Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany on occasion of Zugzwang, Sung Tieu’s first institutional solo exhibition, curated by Damian Lentini. Zugzwang (from German 'compulsion to move') is a situation found in chess and other turn-based games wherein one player is put at a disadvantage because of their obligation to make a move; a player is said to be "in zugzwang" when any legal move will worsen their position.