Hungry Ghosts 2022
oil on canvas, 32 x 48 inches
Most Recent Paintings
Titled Once For A While, my latest series of paintings tell the story of a Vietnamese family’s awkward attempts to integrate into Canadian life. It explores the idea of whether narrative visual art featuring racial minorities can impact how viewers think about immigration.
The six compositions made their debut in January 2022 at the Chapel Gallery in Victoria BC.
I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Media for Once For A While
January 23, 2022, CBC News,
Victoria painter depicts immigrant life for Vietnamese Canadian families in solo exhibit by Winston Szeto
January 23, 2022 Victoria News, Victoria artist’s new exhibit explores Canadian identity through immigrant family’s eyes by Jane Skrypnek
January 17, 2022 CBC Radio All Points West live interview
Hanging the Exhibit, January 2022
Opening Night Presentation for Once For A While, Jan 2022
Selected Works
About Me
Born in 1982 in a pre-internet world, I did not begin an artistic practice until 2017 when I could finally afford to take art lessons. Attending evening atelier classes with Victoria-based artist Nicole Sleeth, by 2019 I began to pursue an artistic life in earnest. With support from the Canada Council for the Arts I launched my first solo exhibition in January of 2022 at the Chapel Gallery in Victoria BC.
My work gives viewers insight into experiences as a Canadian born to a family of Vietnamese refugees. The main purpose of doing so is to bring Asian faces into the mainstream fine art world in ways that are not exotic, magical, or otherwise orientalized.
I try to emphasize how racialized constructions of identity can become a burden to Canadian-born individuals, like me, who are expected to act as an ethnographer of a foreign country they do not know.
I express this theme on the canvas by painting scenes where I purposefully misinterpret Vietnamese cultural practices or poke fun at cultural stereotypes.
My public works reflect the ways in which my imagination is constrained by having only second-hand knowledge of Vietnam from my parents, whose teachings were constrained by their own limited understanding of a homeland they left in order to forget. The burden of having to perform a Vietnamese-Canadian identity, as if the hyphen gives each side of this identity equal weight, is something that must be challenged.
Exhibitions, Publications, Awards
2022
Solo Exhibition of Selected Works, Victoria Arts Council @ McPherson PlayHouse (Oct-Dec)
Finalist, Boynes Emerging Artist Award, 6th Edition
The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant
Solo Exhibition "Once For A While"
Chapel Gallery, Victoria BC
2021
Royal British Columbia Museum
RBCM@Outside Virtual Fieldtrip Interview December 2021
ArtAscent Art & Literary Journal 47 February 2021
10th Annual All Women Online Art Exhibition, Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery - Special Recognition for Excellence in Art for 'china town' 12"x24" oil on canvas
2020
Sooke Fine Art Show
2019
AIRE The Annual International Representational Exhibition, Vancouver
Sidney Fine Art Show
Sooke Fine Art Show