Being the most catastrophic refugee crisis in the second half of the 20th century, yet the post-1975 exodus of almost two million Vietnamese, about one-third of whom died at sea, is not recognized as part of Vietnam’s official history. Responding to this politically driven historical amnesia, Chung launched the Vietnam Exodus History Learning Project between 2015-2018, commissioning and working with a group of young painters in Saigon to study and render archival photographs of the Vietnamese refugee migration into paintings. Throughout critique sessions as part of the technical process, questions about the exodus arose and the artists actively took part in discussing this particular history.

During Chung’s research in Hong Kong (2015-2018), she came across a group of homeless and stateless Vietnamese–the leftover refugees from the last century that were rejected by western countries for their prior involvement with crimes in Hong Kong–who had lived under a bridge in the Sham Shui Po area and joined by a group of new asylum seekers from Việt Nam. This encounter added more complexity to the final iteration of the project: photographs Chung took of their current living conditions and from her visits to former detention centers and refugee camps in Hong Kong, which housed the former refugees, are superimposed with iconic photographs of the exodus to create a digital sketch of a panoramic photo collage. The painters initially turned the sketch into seven-segment paintings (83 x 114 cm / each). Chung then worked with two of the artists to create a large-scale painting on a scroll of watercolor paper (113.5 x 924.5 cm) based on the sketch in its entirety. This scroll painting interweaves places, people, and events to portrait an epic exodus of Vietnamese refugees in the 20th century. The painting underpins the importance of seeing refugees as people and their lives as lived, as opposed to the practice of reducing their existence to ID numbers in detention centers and camps, or statistical data in reports and policy making. Moreover, the project aims to bring historical awareness to younger generations, with other perspectives that counter Việt Nam’s single-narrative history produced through statecraft.

[All watercolors are the result of the Vietnam Exodus History Learning Project, carried out in collaboration with Hồ Hưng, Huỳnh Quốc Bảo, Lê Nam Đy, Nguyễn Hoàng Long, Đặng Quang Tiến, Phạm Ái, Võ Châu Hoàng Vy, Nguyễn Văn Đủ, and Nguyễn Kim Tố Lan.]

Related Exhibitions:
Việt Nam, Past Is Prologue | Smithsonian American Art Museum | 2019
Imagined Borders | 12th Gwangju Biennale, Korea | 2018
Dismantling the Scaffold | Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong | 2018
Superposition-Equilibrium & Engagement | 21st Biennale of Sydney | 2018
the unwanted population | Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York | 2017
The Việt Nam Exodus Project | Hong Kong Chapter | Art Basel Hong Kong | 2016

◀︎ ▶︎ All Projects