FOB II Exhibition Opens This Weekend at New VAALA Center in Santa Ana

By Võ Hồng Chương-Đài 

This weekend, VAALA will invite everyone to come and celebrate the many artistic and community voices that make up the Vietnamese American community with the opening of the exhibition, FOB II: Art Speaks/Nghệ Thuật Lên Tiếng. FOB II will feature more than 50 works by artists and writers living and working in Vietnam and the U.S. These works explore the intersection of art, community and politics, and seek to provoke conversations about the line between art and politics, and the significance of history and the sense of belonging in our interpretation of symbols, memories, stories and democracy.

      The exhibition explores the legacy of the American/Vietnam War, the voices and faces of Vietnamese Americans that have been rendered invisible and irrational in the popular American media, and the vast range of political opinions and worldviews within the Vietnamese American community. “We asked for collaboration from all segments of the community—not only from the artists themselves but also from community leaders, scholars, journalists, protestors, and especially those whose voices have been silenced through censorship either in Viet Nam or here in the U.S,” says FOB II Co-curator Tram Le. “We wanted to consider all voices and provide a platform for the community to speak up and become strengthened by having a collective voice rather a divided one.”

      The exhibition challenges the question of what constitutes Vietnamese American identity by showcasing works that engage not only with the divisive politics of communism/anti-communism, but also with issues of technology, racism, the post-9/11 world order, democratic practices, sexuality and youth culture.

      Works by banned and censored writers, poets, and visual artists from Vietnam as well as artwork by Vietnamese American artists raise the question of censorship while attending to the history of war and trauma suffered by those on both sides of the Vietnam/American War.

      Other works in the show explore the process of remembering the “homeland,” the artistic and intellectual creation of new communities in the US, different understandings of gender and sexuality, and the making of a Vietnamese American youth culture influenced by American hip hop, Asian pop, and Vietnamese cultural practices.

      Among the works are four videos by Hong-An Truong, an artist whose works examine how nostalgia can be evoked with “imagined” memories and experiences through images. Drawing on archival footage of Vietnam during the French colonial and American War eras, Truong explores the relationship between the colonial power and the colonized person, the process of story-telling and imagining the nation, and the popularization of war footage and the danger of its transformation into entertainment.

      Brian Doan, another artist featured in FOB II, is a photographer who explores how and why people attribute certain meanings to symbols such as the image of Ho Chi Minh. In his photographs “Thu Duc 2008” and “Avon, Massachusetts 2006,” Doan juxtaposes two figures who represent the different paths that people took in the aftermath of the Vietnam/American War. “Avon, Massachusetts 2006” explores the alienation and deep sense of loss and pain that Vietnamese Americans faced in being displaced from Vietnam to the US, and the struggles that they had to endure to create a new life for themselves. “Thu Duc 2008” brings up the relevance of communist ideology in contemporary Vietnamese society, which is driven by consumerism and an internationally fused pop culture.