“This Souvenir Dơnt Forget” is a series I started during my residency at Mass MoCA, 2022. The series was later finished in 2024 and featured at the Worcester Art Museum’s Sidney and Rosalie Rose Gallery, as part of their Central Massachusetts Artist Initiative.

The series of paintings explores the connections between memory, experience, and inheritance. I am referencing photos from my parents time in the Philippines en route to America to understand the emotions and experience of losing home. As a child of postwar Vietnam, I am trying to explore the inheritance of this memory and the transformation and causality that it has to myself and the diaspora community.

From the loss what do we gain?

My exploration and findings have led me to the crossroads of what a family unit can mean. Stories of immediate family and chosen family that have demonstrated how personhood is an active development along with others.

I plan for my future works to explore this sense of personhood through figurative and abstract means.

Please stay tuned for those! —And feel free to reach out with any questions or inquiries.

From top down,

Me 86

Mixed media on Vietnamese silk, Cone denim, and chiffon

2024

Ba 86

Mixed media on Vietnamese silk, Cone denim, and chiffon

2024

Mothers Tongue

Mixed media on Vietnamese silk and chiffon