December 2025 / Cut, Stitch, Liminal

Cut, Stitch, Liminal

Trung Pham
Minh Carrico
Chau Huynh

December 04, 2025 - January 17, 2026

Opening Reception, Thursday, December 4, 5-8pm

Gallery Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 11–4pm

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, a pivotal event that led to the first massive migration of Vietnamese refugees to the United States. This exhibition brings together the voices of Vietnamese American artists whose lives have been profoundly shaped and transformed by the Vietnam War. Through the work, these artists offer a powerful exploration of the refugee experience, delving into themes of loss, resilience, identity, and renewal.

The exhibition features pieces across three distinct mediums, each embodying the unique struggles and triumphs of displacement and cultural adaptation.

Together, these works create a dialogue that reflects the artists’ journeys and connects to the collective memory and ongoing narratives of the Vietnamese diaspora.

Artist Statements // Bios

Chau Huynh 

The Vietnam/American war ended in 1975 with the official conclusion that Vietnamese people won the war. However, the post war era is a different story when the unpacked and unspoken traumas that more complicated and causing invisible wound for so many of Vietnamese for the last 50 years. I am one that belongs to post war generation who experiences the unnamed trauma that is silently, heavily, unconsciously and involuntarily passed down from the previous generation, especially from my parents who both endured dramatically through the war. 

I thought the war had nothing to do it me since I am living in a peaceful time. Turned out, often time I feel stuck and confused, sad and depressed, numb and anxious when the word “war” mentioned. 

I have been using my art practice to learn about this controversial war for the last 20 years so I could own my truth.  Eventually I learnt that truth hurts but it is necessary for healing.  

This project is my attempt to record my grief for my father who passed away in 1993. I remembered that when we were together, my father and I barely talked about the war and his experience related to the war. We did not have a good relationship because he left the family when I was a child. When he died, I mourned him publicly but never wholeheartedly grief him. In my mind back there, I never had a love for him since I felt numb. When I grew older, the numbness turned into guilt. The guilt gets heavy when I feel that I miss him. 

The two quilts I had done for this show represent my courage and effort to learn the truth about my father, my grief for him, my yearning to hear from him that he would say about the war. I used his green blanket that he carried with him throughout his lifetime to sew onto the quilt as my commitment to mend my relationship with him.   Deep down from my heart, I know that I would never know his truth. Yet, through the quest of finding my truth, I faithfully believe that each hand stitch from this project would help me to transform my guilt to love. 

Grief is love !

Trung Pham

This series explores liminal space, shaped by my experience of living “betwixt and between.” I immigrated to the U.S. in 1990, and the refugee experience has given me a profound understanding of what it means to exist between worlds. My paintings focus on the periphery—the marginalized, the spaces of belonging and unbelonging.

Liminal space carries ambiguity, disorientation, and turbulence, yet within it lies the possibility of transformation and growth. Through my artistic process, I seek to honor these experiences and invite contemplation. I work with oil on canvas, emphasizing texture and subtle shifts of color. By scumbling paint across the surface, I disrupt and flatten the image, creating a visible texture that signifies presence—an embodied experience rather than a mere illustration. The restrained palette acts as a veil, revealing soft layers beneath. These slight variations in color and texture evoke light filtering through a surface, like a window.

Situated between representation and abstraction, the paintings remain undefined and indistinct echoes of the immigrant experience. I hope that they serve as contemplative windows, offering viewers space to reflect on their own journeys of time, memory, displacement, and transformation.

Minh Carrico

A rural public school outside the city limits in 1975 was the epicenter of my identity conflict. On the first day of grade one, the teacher introduced me as Bang (pronounced Bong) to my homeroom class. This quickly turned into students calling me “Bing, Bang, Bong” regularly. Being the only Vietnamese and Asian American, I was shy and reserved. However, everything changed when I discovered a superpower midway through high school. 

I joined the yearbook staff in my junior year, thinking I could hide from the world as a photographer. Classmates would say, “Make me look good” or “What should I do?” before taking their photos. Thus, my transformation began. The camera gave me the authority to direct people into the images I envisioned. At the end of the school year, the student council sold personalized matching outfits to the next senior class. I had the unfortunate version of my name printed in yellow block letters on the back of my black sweatshirt. This was my way of mentally separating myself from the tormentors, knowing that by the end of 12th grade, I would be forging a path away from Dixie’s Land. 

Through artifacts, photographs, and reimagined objects, this interactive installation reflects on my experiences at Joe T. Robinson High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.