An-My Lê can barely recall the Hawaiian shirt that the blond American wore when he put her into a black cargo van.
When dawn broke, she took one last glance at the landscape through the windows of the American C-130 aircraft as it disappeared into the clouds.
Complicated emotions of uncertainty and anger, guilt and abandonment all intersect for artists from Lê’s generation; those who are not fully Vietnamese in Vietnam nor American in America.
Shrouded in war, these Vietnam-born American artists use their memories not so much as a political protest as an emotional inquiry, through the generational traumas that have plagued their families since the day they left home.
And only now are Western institutions finally giving these displaced artists room to engage with these traumas.
Persons:
Nam, Lê
Organizations:
Communist, Western Bloc, Air Base
Locations:
Saigon, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Việt Nam, United States, Republic of Vietnam, Vietnam, America