About The Exhibition

Vagabond presents “50 Years of HOPE and HA-HAs,” the DMV’s first Vietnamese American art exhibition, celebrating the expansiveness of the diaspora. 2025 marks the 50-year anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam. The mainstream perception of Viets has remained unchanged for decades, rooted in the suffering of war, yet nothing about our community is static.

In the 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the importance of understanding the Viet experience in saying, “we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”

The exhibition features visual art, poetry, video art, zines and music by over 20 Viet artists including four zine collectives, offering counter narratives from the 1.5 and 2nd generation while uplifting the multi-cultural intersectionality of the diaspora. The theme of resilience is interwoven through joy, memorial, heritage, catharsis, solidarity, representation and community.

The exhibition title comes from Ocean Vuong’s poem, “The Last Dinosaur,” which asks how we can live better despite a destroyed past: 

Oh wind-broke wanderer, 
widow of hope & ha-has…
I was made to die
but I’m here to stay.
—Ocean Vuong

This exhibition is curated by Anthony Le and Philippa Hughes and funded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ Art Exhibition Grant program.