50 Years of HOPE and HA-HAs
A Vietnamese American Art Exhibition | January 16 — March 1, 2025 | Special Events
Meet the Artists
Learn more about the artists and zine collectives in the exhibition including their artist statement, work on display and contact.
Zines Collectives
(Jenn Tran)
Artists at opening of 50 Years of HOPE and HA-HAs | Photo by Ashley Jaye Williams 
Ao dai group shot at exhibition | Photo by Ashley Jaye Williams 
L to R: Philippa Hughes, Valerie Plesch and Anthony Le | Photo by Ashley Jaye Williams 
Sound performance by Theresa-Xuan Bui | Photo by Ashley Jaye Williams 
L to R: Aaron Myers, Philippa Hughes, Anthony Le, Ben DeGuzman and Thu Anh Nguyen | Photos by Ashley Jaye Williams
Anthony Trung Quang Le (he/they) is a DC-based multidisciplinary artist and identifies as Vietnamese, American, nonbinary and Queer. They work in painting, video, sculpture, printmaking, performance, writing and curation, exploring the joy of nonconformity.
I make surreal images of people close to me, pop culture references and my own self-image in narratives about bias, power and the joy of nonconformity. I investigate masculine stereotypes in our patriarchal society and offer counter-narratives of vulnerability as strength. I’m interested in remixing Asian iconography to dismantle the model minority myth, emasculation and fetishization. I’m exploring queerness through scenes of social deviance and otherness through anthropomorphic metaphor. I pinpoint moments of humor, joy and duality to show how my Asian and nonbinary identity feels expansive.
Featured Work:
New Year at the Garden of Eden Center (2022)
Acrylic on canvas, 65 x 38 inches
Golden Is My Family Jubilee (2024)
Single Channel Video, 6:42 minutes
Antonius-Tín Bui (they/them) is a polydisciplinary artist and shapeshifter invested in the transformative potential of improvisation, portraiture, craft, and ritual.
They are the child of Paul and Van Bui, two Vietnamese refugees who sacrificed everything to provide a future for their four kids and extended family. Born and raised in Bronx, NY, Antonius eventually moved to Houston before pursuing a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
Featured Work:
Antonius-Tín Bui & Theresa-Xuan Bui
upon skin, upon stone (2020)
Single Channel Video, 12:10 minutes
As a child of Vietnamese immigrants, I try to be resourceful with my chemical engineering degree and apply it to poetry. The first steps of the scientific method are to observe and ask questions with the goal of making a discovery through a continuous cycle of experiments and analysis. The last step is sharing the wonderous or disastrous results. The same goes for my poetry, often humorous and layered with sarcasm about family, identity, and politics. Sometimes, the poem process starts with a form and uses Excel to plot out syllables or rhyme schemes. Other times, it begins with a pop culture reference as an entrance to understand how systems interact at micro and macro levels. When I sit down and write without letting the world distract me, it’s always the most joyful experience, getting to play with words and visual form. Overall, I want to take part in the collective healing and decolonization through poetry and reimagine a future outside of the confines of the American Dream. Besides, what greater alchemy can there be other than turning inherited trauma into art, a reinvention of self and society?
Featured Work:
Chanlee Luu
The Joke about the Orange
2024
Hien Kat Nguyen (they/them) is a Richmond-based artist.
History and folklore are the roots of humanity. This fundamental belief underpins my research, where storytelling deepens our understanding of others. As an immigrant navigating life in America, I inhabit a space rich with nuanced perspectives. Creating three-dimensional autobiographies allows me to document my unique yet ordinary lived experience.
My life has matured within the boundaries of always being the “other”, whether in Vietnam as a young queer person, or later in the States as an immigrant. Despite being a minority in a country brimming with xenophobia, I still choose life in America, since it offers pockets of community I couldn’t find in Vietnam. While my memories of Vietnam are sometimes unpleasant, learning about its folklore has helped bring a new connection to my motherland. To explore this push and pull, I create sculptures to tell stories despite language barriers and vulnerability.
My passion for creative expression led me to woodworking and 3D fabrication. I enjoy problem-solving through wood joinery, carving, metal, and plastic casting. I create installations and game-like objects that engage interaction. Mending contemporary and traditional art, I incorporate ancient symbols and animal personifications into my work.
Featured Work:
Citizen of None
2023
Bronze, cherry wood, gold leaf, red velvet
18 x 14 x 2 inches
The DMV’s very own Jess Trúc My is a musician, political educator, and activist who became a founding member and Creative Director of Viet Place Collective (VPC) with a revolutionary vision— tend to the intergenerational wounds of a post-war community with creativity at the forefront.
Creating under the alias “Fictionals”, they embark on their debut musical project (EP) that serves a powerful duality: (1) uplift the stories and dreams of a double-displaced diaspora and (2) stitch together the loose threads of oppressed peoples around the world with our shared experience in unlearning the dominant narratives of history, traditionally dominated by empire.
How does the story of grief and seeming contradiction of abundance in cultural love delicately weave itself into the identity of our people? This is a question our EP, “Ancestor”, will engage, safeguarding a culture contending for survival and serving as a commentary on the connection between the social, personal, and political.
Featured Work:
“Ancestor” will be performed at the exhibition on March 1, 2025 from 4-6 P.M. RSVP at VietArt.EventBrite.com.
Khanh Aiden Nguyễn (Công Chúa Aiden) was born in Việt Nam and currently calls Boston home. Aiden is an art producer, community organizer, and entrepreneur who uses art as a platform to unite and uplift the LGBTQ+ Vietnamese community. Aiden is best known for co- founding Vănguard and the Queer Vietnamese Film Festival. Aside from running Vănguard, Aiden is also a development officer for AirHuế, a residency program based in Huế, Việt Nam. Aiden’s self-described mission in life is to bring Vietnamese artwork to every corner of the world.
Featured Work:
Khanh Aiden Nguyễn (Công Chúa Aiden)
Portrait
2024
Paper, bead, fabric and acrylic on canvas
42 x 30 inches
For Khánh H. Lê (Vietnamese American) identity plays a central role in artistic output. He continuously probes his personal and familial histories in an attempt to carve out a cultural identity for himself. Le graduated with an MFA from Syracuse University in 2008. His work has been exhibited at the Hunterdon Art Museum (Clinton, New Jersey), Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Honfleur Gallery (Washington, DC), DC Arts Center (Washington, DC), Hillyer Art Space (Washington, DC), Transformer (Washington, DC), and Arlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA). The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities awarded Le the Artist Fellowship for the Visual Arts in 2011 and 2015. Le continues to live and work in Washington, DC, where he actively explores and questions the notion of identities through the lenses of culture and memories.
Featured Work:
Khánh H. Lê
She Waited for Her Family from This Point in Place
2021
Acrylic paint, paper, and plastic jewels on canvas
60 x 84 1/4 inches
This work was exhibited in The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today at the National Portrait Gallery.
Khoi Le (he/him) is a Vietnamese-American interdisciplinary artist based in Richmond, Virginia. His practice is an assortment of experimentation, collecting, object building, and research, all converging to explore the relationship between impermanence and memory. He is particularly interested in using found objects and altering them to create new narratives for something that already bears a past. This process introduces a dual dynamic: connecting the piece to personal histories while simultaneously presenting a fresh context and narrative The interplay between memory and impermanence unfolds into an examination of time and its malleable impact on the human experience.
Featured Work:
Khoi Le
in god we trust
2024
reclaimed wood, plywood, canvas, acrylic, immigration documents, stamp
40 x 30 inches
This work uses my mother’s immigration documents as a vehicle for storytelling and a lens for exploring time and identity. The pursuit of the “American Dream,” often portrayed as a path to freedom and opportunity, has evolved into a means of escape from trauma, grief, and financial instability. In this pursuit, individuals often sacrifice their past lives, cultural roots, and personal histories to align with the idealized image of American freedom.
But at what cost? How does this commodification of the “American Dream” strip immigrants of their heritage and identity? Everything has a price, and the promise of a better life in America often demands the erasure of culture and history. This work questions the toll of immigration in the United States, asking: What does it mean to be an immigrant in a land that markets freedom while quietly demanding assimilation?
Kim Sandara (b.1994, Falls Church, VA) is a bi, genderqueer, Lao/Vietnamese American, multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Using abstract painting, stop motion animation and cartooning, their work focuses on queer escapism, intergenerational trauma and intersectional identity. In 2019 and 2021 they’ve been featured in the Washington Post for their music paintings and 270 Million Project, spotlighting the issue of bombs left in Laos from the Secret War. In 2023, their DC mural was featured on a New York Times article on public spaces. Currently, they are working on a graphic novel memoir on their coming out story.
Featured Work:
Kim Khouan Khong Sandara
Dreaming of Luangprabang…White Americans tell me it’s Great
2023
Mixed Media collage
18 x 24 inches
Lộc “Leo” Nguyễn is a comedian based in Washington D.C. Originally from Sài Gòn, Việt Nam, Leo came to the United States at 17 and started to perform stand-up comedy in college while studying Politics and Theater. Since 2015, Leo has performed at LA’s Laugh Factory, Boston Comedy Festival, Chicago’s Lincoln Lodge, NYC’s Triad Theater. Leo is also a community builder, who produced stand-up comedy shows that highlight Asian talents with “Noodles and Comedy” in DC and “Vui Vẻ Fest” in New York City, and “Dui Dẻ Night” in Orange County, CA.
In Việt Nam, Leo co-founded “Local Lầy”- a collective of comedians, DJs, show producers, and drag artists that are leading the underground alternative entertainment scene in Sài Gòn.”
Featured Work:
Lộc “Leo” Nguyễn has a comedy special in the exhibition.
Loc Huynh (b. 1992, Austin, TX) graduated with a BFA from Texas State University in 2016 and an MFA from the University of North Texas in 2020.
Through painting, I use materiality to reaffirm the material world and my presence in it. My aesthetics are informed by my interest in graphic languages and the history of painting. I adopt elements from various visual cultures.
The visual vocabulary I use is idiosyncratic, but it also serves as evidence of my biography. Growing up in a Vietnamese-American household in Texas, I was exposed to imagery associated with both Vietnamese, Chinese and American culture. To me, red envelopes and paper lanterns sit comfortably in the same hierarchy as other assorted American kitsch. I embrace the tropes of both cultures in my work, to give them an opportunity to create new stories with familiar languages. By borrowing aspects of widely disseminated images, I create accessibility for the viewer. This nuanced hybridization is emblematic of my identity, which reinvents, or at least calls into question, expectations associated with Eastern and Western cultures.”
Featured Work:
Loc Huynh
Piedmont Blues
2024
Acrylic and Enamel on Linen
20 x 16 x 1 inches
Ngoc “Naomi” Le was born in Vietnam in 1995. In 2020, she received her BFA from Towson University, in Baltimore, MD and was honored with the Ro and Marius Award. Naomi has exhibited her work in the NextGen 7.0 Exhibition at VisArts, Out of Order at Maryland Art Place, and Katzen Art Center. She earned her MFA from American University in 2023.
I like it when I find a characteristic of something that people usually overlook. These things often are the commodities that people are familiar with and have the “instruction” ways to use them on the labels. For example, a pen, and its purpose is to write or draw on a surface with ink. The challenge is to see beyond the product’s usage instruction to capture its uniqueness.
I am merely just a helping hand for the material to show off its potentiality via my work. If nothing else, it is a storyteller. It is produced. It performs. It transforms. Its hidden non-hidden character is obvious without being obvious.
Featured Work:
Ngoc (Naomi) Le
The Unfortunate
2020
Ink on paper
22 x 15 inches
Philippa Pham Hughes is a social sculptor, educator, speaker, and writer. Currently, she is a Social Practice Resident at The Kennedy Center, Visiting Artist For Arts & Civic Engagement at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and a Lecturer at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She applies relational thinking and an aesthetic of care and delight to her work in democracy building, civic engagement, and repairing the social fabric of our country one creative conversation at a time. Philippa draws from the arts and humanities to design spaces for honest conversations across political, social, and cultural differences. She has produced hundreds of creative activations since 2007 for people who might not normally meet to engage with one another in unconventional and meaningful ways. She also curates multi-disciplinary art exhibits & experiences. These relational experiences build social capital, social cohesion, and social discourse. She is a curious and lateral thinker whose multi-disciplinary practice is informed by sociology, psychology, philosophy, political science, history, community organizing, design thinking, creative placemaking, art, and humanities. Philippa has spoken internationally, including SXSW, The Sphere Initiative at the Cato Institute, TEDxAmericanUniversity, Placemaking Week Amsterdam, University of Michigan’s Penny Stamps Speaker Series, Sparkfest, Fort Worth Women’s Policy Forum. Her work has been featured by artnet, CNN, PBS Newshour, CityLab, and The Washington Post. Philippa’s mission: to create a society in which all humans flourish.
Featured Work:
Philippa Hughes
The Greatest Poem
2023
Phượng-Duyên Hải Nguyễn (they/she) is a Charlottesville-based artist.
Embroidery and sewing are the processes that play a central role in my practice. I sew architectural forms onto a water-soluble backing which allows me to separate the stitches from this support. The act of washing away the backing demolishes the support but also transforms the backing material into an adhesive that, once dried, stiffens the stitches and allows them to stand on their own. The stitches remained behind to create an abstracted architectural form within the dissolved contextual space. I think of this “void” as a symbolic act of reclaiming and rebuilding what is once lost.
Featured Work:
Nhớ
2024
Installation, Sculpture
120 x 90 inches
shawn williams (she/they) is a Virginia Commonwealth University alumna who earned her Bachelor’s in African-American Studies & English and is currently working towards her Master’s in Interdisciplinary Studies. Utilizing her experiences as a trans Afro-Latina and Vietnamese scholar, shawn writes and crafts narratives that challenge and critique our thoughts around identity-making, Black transfeminism, and abolitionist politics. Her passion for writing comes from a long tradition of honoring her ancestors and the practice of storytelling and is a testament to her continued work in higher education and community organizing for Black trans and queer people.
Featured Work:
shawn williams
The Buddha’s Touch
Theresa-Xuan Bui (they/them) is a queer non-binary Vietnamese-American artist questioning the intersections of the personal and political as a means to critically imagine the future. Through drawing and dancing, they translate their embodied practice into a performance of language and sound. The work does not seek to answer or proclaim, but rather, openly and recklessly process the self within larger power structures. They are a princess of the Bui household, a legacy of Vietnamese refugees and vanguard Asian-Americans. Born and raised in Bronx, NY, Theresa moved to Houston, TX before pursuing a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
Featured Work:
Antonius-Tín Bui & Theresa-Xuan Bui
upon skin, upon stone
2020
Single Channel Video
12:10 minutes
Thu Anh Nguyen is a Vietnamese American poet whose poetry has been featured in the Southern Humanities Review, Cider Press Review, NPR’s “Social Distance” poem for the community, The Crab Orchard Review, and The Salt River Review. The author’s poems were also named as a semi-finalist for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize for the Southern Humanities Review. She was honored with a writing residency with The Inner Loop Poetry Series in Washington, D.C. She also writes about equity, justice, and community through literacy. Her essays on the importance of reading diverse literature have been featured in Literacy Today.
Featured Work:
Thu Anh Nguyen
Tradition
Valerie Plesch is an independent first-generation American-Vietnamese-Argentinian photojournalist, documentary photographer and writer based in Washington, D.C. where she covers politics, Capitol Hill, immigration, refugee resettlement, and other issues for editorial assignments. Her long-term work explores the intersection of the aftermath of wars, memory, identity, and trauma.
Since early 2021, she’s been documenting the growing Afghan community in the Washington, DC area and the arrival of asylum seekers and refugees who fled Afghanistan in recent months and years. As a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantee working on Afghan refugee resettlement stories, she explored and chronicled challenges faced by refugees who evacuated to the United States during and after the Taliban takeover.
Leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, she spent months photographing inside the Vietnamese American community in northern Virginia where she grew up for a feature story about how the pain and trauma from the Vietnam War played a significant role in Vietnamese American voters’ choice for president.
From 2014-2019, she was based in Pristina, Kosovo where she focused on how the world’s second newest nation confronted its wartime past. She also covered breaking news, human rights issues, religion, sports, politics, and culture. In 2014 she reported from Kabul, Afghanistan during the historic presidential election and produced other feature stories.
Before pursuing her passion for visual storytelling, Valerie held a decade-long career in the international development field implementing USAID-funded projects. Her work took her to post-conflict and post-disaster countries including Afghanistan, where she lived for one year.
Featured Work:
Valerie Plesch
The aftermath of war
2017-2024
Photographs
11 x 17 inches
Vagabond was created by Anthony Le and Philippa Hughes, and its first project was a 2024 art zine curated by Anthony Le and Philippa Hughes, featuring 13 Vietnamese visual artists, musicians, poets and writers, mostly based in the DMV. The zine features artist interviews and photos. Each artist was also commissioned to write a letter to their younger selves as an act of self-love. The project culminated in a zine launch and outdoor exhibition featuring portraits of each artist exhibited in the Lost Origins outdoor Alley Gallery. The project was supported by Wherewithal Grants, a regional regranting program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts administered by Washington Project for the Arts, and a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Vagabond is archived by the Library of Congress and The People’s Archive in Washington, DC.
Vănguard was established in 2014 by founders Khanh Aiden Nguyễn and Nu as an underground, transnational zine connecting and uplifting LGBTQ+ Vietnamese creatives around the world through art, literature, and activism. A decade later, Vănguard has evolved into a publishing house and creative production company dedicated to promoting LGBTQ+ and femme Vietnamese artists, and bringing Vietnamese art to the world. Vănguard is exhibited internationally and archived by the Library of Congress.
Smells Like Rice Zine by Jenn Tran is a love letter from past to present: using food and family recipes as a vessel for memory and time travel through generations. Smells Like Rice was born from a family archive of letters and photos of Vietnam, and a desire to craft a narrative around food – not for consumption, but connection. Beyond the simplified and sanitized versions of food and history, this zine is an honest family narrative of displacement, disconnection, and finding home despite it all. It is written in the tradition of our mothers’ cooking: in approximate measurements and vague instructions. The zine is a snapshot of the everlasting memory of the people we love. Jenn Tran, artist and organizer, created this project to honor their family’s story and the memories they inherited. Jenn is a founding member of Viet Place Collective, and weaves themes of power, place, and belonging into all of their work.
superblooom* is a Vietnamese-American multimedia artist collective created by Colin Viet-An Nguyễn, Cecilia Nguyễn, shawn williams, Jenn Bùi and Sophie Mây Nguyễn that seeks to generate conversation around the diaspora experience and shed light on underrepresented narratives, globally and in the US. As we disseminate literature and artwork alike, SPB* focuses on collaboration and communication across borders.
Our first publication, Made in Vietnam addresses the lack of representation and scholarship of Southeast-Asian countries by highlighting and showcasing the Vietnamese creative scene in Saigon. Other works on display include; “Tôi Biết Ơn Tất Cả (I Am Grateful for Everything)” a collection of journal entries from Huỳnh Thị Châu, an ex-Viet Minh servicewoman; and a reprint of Vietnamese-American poet Quoc-Huy Tran’s poetry art book: “YÊU YÊU” which details Tran’s exploration of his recent trip to Vietnam & serves as a self-portrait.
Through this collective we are cutting through the media, the noise, the lies, the myths, and adding to the conversation of Southeast Asian artistry. We are here to connect, create, and inspire a superblooom.
Zines:
superblooom*
Made in Vietnam
superblooom*
Tôi Biết Ơn Tất Cả (I Am Grateful for Everything)
superblooom*
YÊU YÊU (by Quoc-Huy Tran)