About this event

Listened to Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and exhibited artists Ann Le and Phung Huynh as they discussed their experiences of displacement and conflict and its lasting impact on subsequent generations. The conversation was moderated by Vietnamese-American filmmaker Quyên Nguyen-Le.

More about the panelists:

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer was a New York Times bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His other books included The Refugees, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He was a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He had been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. His most recent publication was Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his six-year-old son, Ellison.

Ann Le worked through identity, culture, family history, and the duality of becoming Vietnamese-American. Inspired by the cultural contexts in her life, she correlated the artificial with remembrances of generational trauma. Sentiment was vital in her works as she questioned her personal experiences to construct imposing art. She excavated her lineage by revisiting her family’s experiences, using personal and found images to reconstruct slippages in time and history. As layers of images were stacked upon one another, Le traveled through time, commenting on the idea of home, displacement, separation, and how we embrace and conquer loss. Tragic and poetic composites were pieced together to unravel narratives that placed her Vietnamese-American perspective into a contemporary landscape. Ann Le was first-generation born in San Diego, CA, and she lived and worked in Los Angeles.

Phung Huynh was a Los Angeles-based artist and educator whose practice was primarily in drawing, painting, and public art. Her work explored cultural perception and representation. Huynh challenged beauty standards by constructing images of the Asian female body vis-à-vis plastic surgery to unpack how contemporary cosmetic surgery could create obscurity in cultural and racial identity. Her current work of drawings on pink donut boxes explored the complexities of the refugee experience in Southeast Asian communities. Phung Huynh had solo exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills and the Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside. Her paintings and drawings had been exhibited nationally and internationally in countries such as Germany and Cambodia. She had also completed public art commissions for the Metro Orange Line, Metro Silver Line, and the Los Angeles Zoo. Phung Huynh was a Professor of Art at Los Angeles Valley College and served as Chair of the Community-Based Art/Prison Arts Collective Advisory Council, which advised a vital program at California State University San Bernardino that provided art courses and workshops to underserved communities and prisons. She completed undergraduate coursework at the University of Southern California, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with distinction from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and received her Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University.

Quyên Nguyen-Le was a queer Vietnamese American filmmaker whose narrative and documentary films had been shown in various film festivals, universities, art galleries, and community spaces internationally. quyennl.com

To join the program, participants were asked to register in advance for the webinar: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eo6QlljXTQKbTxZITN3a5g

After registering, participants received a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

The program was co-sponsored by the Playhouse Village Association.