There is Healing for Us (Current)

Commissioned by Council District 7 in partnership with Arts Council for Long Beach
Location: Long Beach Multi-Resource Center, 1301 W 12th St, Long Beach, CA 90813

I’m so grateful to have been introduced to this area, and to have the opportunity to offer some color, life, and art into this area of our beautiful city. [Learn more about my introduction to this little corner of our world.]

Thank you to Council District 7, the Arts Council, all of our neighbors who voted for this mural, and to the staff at LBMRC for your hospitality and kindness to myself and to the ones who need more of it in their lives. It has been an absolute pleasure serving with you.

Learn more about this mural.

Arise. Shine. Thy Light is Come. (Current)

Produced by Los Ángeles World Airports (LAWA)
Location: Los Ángeles International Airport (LAX), Tom Bradley International Terminal, Mezzanine

Thank you, LAWA, for granting me an enormous canvas and generous support to paint more birrrrds! I am trilling with joy!

This summer, I have the privilege of working on my largest mural to date (7 x 185 feet. Yay and Eek.) My hope is to turn the corridor into an lively, welcoming environment for visitors by introducing birds who call Los Ángeles home. The mural speaks on migration and the things that inspire the movement of our immigrant and refugee neighbors. I’m so honored to be the inaugural artist who will be making work for this newly-renovated space!

Time to seriously tighten up my mural education game. I’m looking forward to working with the warm LAWA team and would like to thank Tim, Sarah, and Stephanie, the stewards of this space, for welcoming me and our feathered friends into this place that is ours. *cheep *cheep*

And an extended thanks to Jennifer and Debbie from Cinnabar, and also Abagail from The Sign Club for your assistance and paint wisdom.

Learn more about the process in this short documentary by Manoa Sky Films.

Also featured in How I Hiked LAX with Chris Reynolds and the LA Times

Made of Memory (Current)

Location: New Museum Los Gatos (NUMU), 106 E Main St, Los Gatos, CA 95030
Exhibition Dates: Oct 25, 2024 – March 16, 2025
Members Tour: Friday, October 25 5-6pm
Opening reception: Friday, October 25 6-8pm
Artist Talk: February 2, 2025 Register here

I’m excited to announce that I’ll have some work featured in a group exhibition featuring women artists working in various media. This show will explore concepts of memory as it pertains to generational and cultural experience, immigration and migration. I’ve been focusing on these themes for over a decade now, and am looking forward to learning about more artists who cull from these human experiences.

Two very exciting things about this show. After a decade since its birth, Begins with Tea will be making her debut in the Bay Area, and my Free Birds will be making their debut as well, having been breeding in the studio since 2019 :) Thank you, Michèle, for the invitation!

Read our review in Metro Silicon Valley

My Intimate Partner (Current)

Location: Oceanside Museum of Art, 704 Pier View Way, Oceanside, CA 92054
Exhibition dates: October 5 - March 16
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 5, 2024 5-7pm [Register here]

I’m humbled to be participating in this exhibition that speaks on the sensitive issue of violence that within intimate relationships. In partnership with the County of San Diego and the Women’s Resource Center, who provides encouragement and support for survivors of domestic violence through advocacy, the artists in this show stand with these survivors.

My work, Broken, Tattered, Healing, Whole, examines the passage of healing and generational healing, and inheritance and considers time as a mending agent.

My Intimate Partner is proud to be part of the official calendar of World Design Capital (WDC) San Diego Tijuana 2024, an initiative that reimagines, celebrates, transforms, and enhances this region of our country through the lens of design.

Thank you, Smadar, for the invitation to contribute to this cause. I hadn’t realized how many lives I’ve known who have been affected by domestic violence. Somehow, the memories had grown dormant, and resurfaced during the art practice. Art heals, and helps us become a remembering people.

Listen to our interview on KPBS

Textures of Remembrance  (Current)

Presented by the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network in partnership with Oakland Asian Cultural Center Sponsored by California Humanities and California Arts Council Exhibition schedule: January 16, 2022 – March 13, 2022: Kaddatz Galleries, Fergus Falls, MN                                   March 27, 2022 – June 13, 2022: Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Oakland, CA                         October 23, 2022 – May 22, 2023: The Global Museum, San Francisco, CA                       January 7, 2024 - March 3, 2024: The Chandler Museum, Chandler, AZ                                   March 17, 2024 – May 12, 2024: San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA                         June 2, 2024 – October 13, 2024: Museum on Main, Pleasanton, CA                                   March 30, 2025 – July 1, 2025: Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA                      

For We are Called to Freedom will be on display as part of this traveling group exhibit facilitated by Exhibit Envoy to commemorate April 30, 1975. Through contemporary multimedia art and writings, Textures of Remembrance: Vietnamese Artists and Writers Reflect on the Fall of Saigon will explore the way in which this date impacts many Vietnamese.

From DVAN: 2020 is Year 45 for those of us whose own or whose families’ journeys were sparked by the exodus events of April 30, 1975—a date that marks the Fall of Saigon and the dissolution of South Vietnam. For those of us in the diaspora, this historic event also marks the dawn of our Vietnamese diasporic identity as a people scattered to locations all across the globe (although we acknowledge that some Vietnamese left the motherland also before and after that date, and it is of course not possible to claim just one “birthdate” for all of our diasporic journeys). In general, however, we recognize April 30​th ​as a date that holds commemorative weight for many Vietnamese on various shores. It is a date often remembered poignantly – as loss – especially by those of South Vietnamese descent; as well, it is a date that denotes new beginnings. Like all deaths, it is a date of both ending and rebirth.

Hidden Heritages: San José’s Vietnamese Legacy (Current)

Presented by San José Museum of Art, Chopsticks Alley, and the City of San José Office of Cultural Affairs
Period: 2019 - 2024 

Saturday, December 7, 2019: Mapping Memories: Mixed media and storytelling workshop with Binh and Trinh                                                  Listen to the stories shared by Vietnamese refugee elders during our workshop Saturday, February 22, 2020: Ấp Ủ Identity | Journey | Legacy Exhibition, San José Museum of Art           Saturday, October 10, 2020: Preserving Memories: Cyanotype Workshop with Binh and Trinh Thursday, November 19, 2020: Creative Minds: Binh Danh and Trinh Mai Saturday, February 13, 2021: Ca Dao Journey | Poetry | Life: A Poetry Workshop with Anh Bui and Chinh Nguyễn May 16 - September 2024: Hidden Heritages Exhibition, San José City Hall May 16, 2023, 5pm: Road to a Hidden Home performance by Van-Anh Vo and the Blood Moon Orchestra                                                  San José City Hall in conjunction with opening of Hidden Heritages Sunday, December 3, 2023: Hidden Heritages: In Word and in Deed—Artist talk with Trinh Mai, SJMA January 2025: Hidden Heritages exhibition opens at the California Room, Martin Luther King Jr. Library

All related events to Hidden Heritages are free and open to the public and will require registration. During this fellowship period, we will be engaging our community members thought art-making workshops, oral history interviews, and public events.

Hidden Heritages: San José’s Vietnamese Legacy brings Vietnamese artists and community members together to share, amplify, and artistically present stories that reveal the contributions of Vietnamese Americans to San José, one of California’s most diverse cities. I’ll be working with Vietnamese artists, musicians, and poets during a series of community-based, creative learning workshops that will provide opportunities to share personal experiences and memories, and to reflect on the transformational impact Vietnamese Americans have had on San José’s culture and economy, as well as its identity as the capital of Silicon Valley. New artworks inspired by these narratives will culminate in an exhibition at San José City Hall. I am so very much looking forward to this collaborative effort in unearthing the stories of San José’s Vietnamese community.

Thank you to our partnering organizations, and a special thanks to Robin for your perseverance. xo

View my show & tell session that was made to encourage community members to share their stories to contribute to this project.

Spiritual Art Grant (Current)

Presented by the Marianne Oberg Foundation for Spiritual Art (MOFSA), Charlotte, North Carolina
Grant period: 2024   

I’m happy to announce that I have been named one of five recipients of the Marianne Oberg Foundation’s Spiritual Art Grant, whose mission is to inspire, encourage and support the creation of spiritual art, which deepens us, fosters healing and wholeness, and catalyzes growth and transformation.

For this next year, I’ll be revisiting a series of works about forgiveness, and the grace that it allows us, also further exploring light as medium.

Thank you, Bob, Marianne, and the MOFSA team for your support in this work. What a meaningful way to continue Marianne’s legacy.

History as Medium: A conversation with Artist Trinh Mai (Forthcoming)

Published by Asian American Law Journal
Publish date: to be announced

Asian American Law Journal (AALJ) is one of only two law journals in the United States that focuses on Asian American communities. In Summer 2020, AALJ included artwork in her journal for the first time since first published in 1993, and it was an honor to have my portrait of child refugees published in her pages. While we continue sludging through the plight of our refugees who are being detained and deported unlawfully, an urgency has erupted within me to help tell the stories of the families who have been impacted by the injustices within the immigration system. I am happy to announce that AALJ will be publishing a follow-up that centers around these themes.

I am so very grateful to AALJ for offering this space for me to share the childhood memories and the family history that has inspired my history-seeking work, and I hope that this article can help contribute to the scholarship of Vietnamese American refugees who are facing deportation orders in present day. It has been a wonderful process in chronicling these calamitous times in the light of hope.

Our hearts go out to the ones who are caught in these corrupt systems, the ones who are rigorously treading flooding waters to claim their freedom and their home in America. We are with you.

Blessèd be the Peacemakers (Forthcoming)

Location: The Vault Warehouse, Cambodia Town, Long Beach, CA
Dates: Autumn 2024

I am so very honored to be developing another outdoor mural to contribute to our community’s thriving art scene.

The Vault Warehouse is nestled in a diverse area in Cambodia Town, wherein many of our Khmer, Hispanic, and Black neighbors’ lives interweave. While sauntering through the neighborhood, one discovers abundant fruit gardens, Baptist churches, and the Spanish murmurings of students walking home from school.

To ring in the new year, I will be working on my first figurative mural (this surprised me when I realize this, as my body of work is figurative-heavy!). Blessèd be the Peacemakers we will be paying homage to the ones who have landed here and continue tilling the soil of the new land, sowing the good seed that bears fruit to nourish our communities, and watering the crop that replenishes us. This mural pays respect to the ones who cultivate peace within themselves, which stirs about in our homes, and bleeds out into our neighborhoods, our cities, the world, promoting the growth that is necessary in building healthy communities.

Thank you Liz and Roarke for the invitation to smooth some paint onto this beautiful building and onto our city walls. Looking forward to creating this work as a peace offering unto our neighbors and the ones who pass through.

Currently in development. More info to come.

A Miracle Everyday for Dystopian Garden (Forthcoming)

Collaborative work with Justin Amrhein
Location: Spazju Kreattiv, Pjazza Kastilja, Valletta, Malta
Exhibition dates: May 15 - June 22, 2025

I am so honored to contribute a small part in Dystopian Garden, a solo exhibit by our dear brotherfriend, Justin, whose work I have admired since we met in 2002 while pursuing our life’s work at San José State.

For one of his projects, Justin has invited some of his fellow artists (even some fellow Spartans!) to create orchid blossoms that will contribute to his expanding series of Mechanical Orchid schematic drawings. The hybridity of these orchids—in propagation methods and in conceptual artistic process—will help transform Spazju Kreattiv’s atrium exhibition space into a robust, flourishing greenhouse garden. I have chosen a hybrid orchid called A Miracle Everyday, which I created with thread inherited from my grandmother—who raised a large family of orchids in her garden, and the paints and ashes that I inherited from our dear sisterfriend Kelly, with whom Justin and I studied together for years as painters while sauntering on our artistic paths.

Thank you, Justin, for the opportunity to support you in your work, and for the chance to honor our dear sister in this very special way. With a shared love of all things living and the ways in which we can offer them extended life through the ways of art, she would have been thrilled about this show.

Peace be to this House

For Housing California’s Annual Conference, SAFE Credit Union Convention Center, Sacramento, CA Exhibition dates: March 5-7, 2025

I am so excited for this house!

Last year, we presented Peace be to this House in Long Beach for the first time. I was heartfilled by the community’s responses toward what we hope to build together. This March, we will traveling to Sacramento to offer art workshops for this year’s Housing CA’s annual conference. I look forward to strengthening this house in word and in deed.

View installation process from our exhibit during last year’s conference at the Long Beach Convention Center

Art as Gentle Advocate

Presented by Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford Univerisity
Sponsored by Asian Diasporic Art & Aesthetics, Asian American Studies, and the Asian American Activities Center
Location: 524 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
Artist talk and workshop date: March 4, 2025 12-1:30pm [Register for this event]

It is always an honor to spend precious time with my beautiful husband, Hiền, in serving our communities, particularly our young people whose futures will determine the path of our own. We will be speaking about our Vietnamese (Cambodian) American history, how the wars in the motherlands bleed into our lives in present day still, and how this has thrust us into fighting the good fight for a true justice, with art as gentle advocate. I’m so grateful for this marriage that has been grounded in a shared faith, love for humanity, and the desire to help somehow alleviate the suffering that we witness al. around us. We will be sharing some notes from meaningful conversations that we’ve had together, some life lessons life lessons that have present themselves generously in our daily life together, and the ways that these revelations have ignited the inspiration that drives the work that we make together. Here’s to the ones who share in our same heart, who we can do life with.

Thank you to everyone who continues to support Hiền and I in our life’s work.

Art as Aperture into History

For the Cambodian American Studies Model Curriculum (CASMC) Conference Presented by the Santa Clara County and Orange County Offices of Education Presentation location: San José, CA (location to be announced) Presentation date: Friday, January 31, 2025 and Saturday, February 1, 2025

I am so grateful to once again to partner with the have an opportunity to present my work at the Cambodian American Studies Conference wherein Cambodian American scholars, creatives, and community organizations will present to attending K-12 educators and administrators to share ways that we can teach and administrators to support the Cambodian American Studies Model Curriculum via an educational and immersive conference experience.

It warms my heart to return to my belovèd San José to share in this work—this city wherein my husband and I met, and through him, was introduced to the history of Cambodian America. Thank you to everyone who works tirelessly to carry on this history. You are appreciated and loved!