Coming from a history of war-torn Viet Nam, uprooted from my motherland and planted into this American society I now half identify with, half feel exiled in, creating political/social art becomes a catharsis and a refuge. I identify as a radical Vietnamese American feminist frustrated at the system, critical of everything, and wanting to decolonize everything that comes before me. My art, then, becomes a way for me to visually critique a deeply unequal, exploitative, and profit-centric capitalist system we exist in that was inherently built on very racist/sexist/homophobic/patriarchal hierarchies.
My work is an unwelcomed protest, a fierce riot, a remembrance, and tender celebration of my beautiful people. While I hope my series of paintings presents as a strong political statement and social critique, I also want the tenderness, the courage, the love, and the hope to come through. Through my work, I am honoring the strength and struggle of beautiful people finding resistance in everyday survival or through radical protests and actions. I honor the lives of people of color lost in corrupted power-driven wars, in repressed uprisings, murdered at police gun-point backed up by the system, or simply lost through the endurance of everyday struggle, whom might have been forgotten by the very system that exploited their bodies. I paint their images—the forms of their curved and bent bodies, the textures of their worn-out clothes, the colors of their brown skin and dark hair, the creases on their faces like the markings of time—to honor their existence, to commemorate their courage. And to prove they are valuable, to us. I also paint the living, the struggling, the creatively resisting still—to celebrate their resilience. To prove they matter, to me. I celebrate the living of our peoples and our different cultures, our ways of being and seeing, against the violent colonial history imposed on us.
In this current climate of change, with courageous revolutions bloomed in Egypt and the Middle East, with colorful movements bursting worldwide connecting the dots of struggle, and with our very own Occupy and #BlackLivesMatter Movements erupting here in the US, I hope my art can be of some relevance. I hope it can generate some kind of dialogue within our communities, to confront and reach out to those who believe they are unaffected, and to comfort and empower those too affected. At the very least, I hope it can touch a part of our hearts, and thus our consciousness, on some level. Guided by legacies and ancestors, I believe my work is all interconnected with all that has happened and is happening, as my passion is informed and fueled by these realities.
Because my work really is—for the people, my beautiful people.