Curated by the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), “Textures of Remembrance: Vietnamese Artists and Writers Reflect on the Vietnamese Diaspora” presents an intimate perspective of this diasporic experience. The creative pieces showcased here reflect our community’s range of thoughts and emotions. These narratives texturize the Vietnamese diasporic experience, in which refugees are not objects of rescue but instead subjects of artistic and political transformation.

“Textures of Remembrance” evolved from the stories collected from emerging writers and artists shared on DVAN’s online publication diaCRITICS. In 2019, editor Dao Strom launched “(Re-)membering April 30th” as a call for submissions for the diasporic community to reflect on the historic day in terms of both the past and the present. Today, this exhibition builds upon these reflections by drawing upon the following themes: Memory and Trauma, Roots and Belonging, War, and Refuge.

Image Credits:

• Left: Work from Between Tower and Sea series, 2019 by Paul Bonnell
• Center: Recollecting Home, 2019 by Malery Nguyen. Digitally printed photographs & xylene transferred text on handmade banana leaf paper.
• Right: Textures of my Father, 2021 by Terri Trang Lê

“Textures of Remembrance” is a traveling exhibit created in partnership between Exhibit Envoy, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network and Oakland Asian Cultural Center. This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and California Arts Council, a state agency with a mission to strengthen arts, culture, and creative expression as the tools to cultivate a better California for all. Visit calhum.org and arts.ca.gov.