Mother Refuge [left], Cherry Bomb [center]

My work Embodiment is a wallpaper rendition of a collective narrative, through the transmission of memory that is not my own, but my mother’s.  It refers to moments during her forced emigration and to iconic events that occurred during the Vietnam War. The wallpaper is my interpretation of those specific events.  A key investigative element of my work is the history and events leading up to my Americanization to answer questions of how, why, and when.  The processes of my lineage’s demystification lead to Embodiment’s explorative depiction of the cultural and political significance of the Vietnam War.  Wallpaper has a close affinity to the idea of ‘home’ with each digitally hand traced image using specific colors to evoke moments of diaspora.  I devised and created my own template and placed each traced image to create the wallpaper.