As a child of Vietnamese refugees, I have never felt comfortable in traditional Canadian spaces including art galleries. This is due in part to the underrepresentation of subjects I could relate to. From my experience, collections exhibited in Victoria rarely depicted Asian figures; when they were, they were characterized as exotic or magical. But, it wasn’t until a recent incident that I recognized the current opportunity I have as an artist to contribute to a different way of representing Asian figures in art.   

In 2018 a noticed a local magazine article that featured food vendors of Victoria’s China Town. It happened to feature eleven white entrepreneurs and one Asian one, despite the fact that the majority of Victoria China Town’s entrepreneurs are Chinese-Canadian or Vietnamese-Canadian. This instance highlighted for me how few people from diverse cultural backgrounds have found their way into mainstream culture in Victoria.

Once for a While depicts what it is like to grow up in a new immigrant family while balancing two different cultural value-sets and expectations. Specific moments from my childhood and two from memories of other Vietnamese-Canadians will balance the various compositions aesthetically and thematically. The intention is to capture humorous moments where cultures have clashed. This lighter approach is designed to make the project more widely inviting and increase accessibility to the general public.

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I’d also like to challenge the idea that asian artists must self-orientalize to fit into the western imagination in order to gain acceptance by western audiences.  There will be no women wearing áo dài here.