Overview
A Non Model Minority
2020
2020
Little Saigon Creative
Seattle, WA
Seattle, WA
The background for my visual autobiography is a white Southern community in Little Rock, Arkansas, during the 1970s. Raised during the peak of the “Model Minority” rhetoric, scrutiny of my academic success was relentless from the first day of elementary school. My mother envisioned me becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer as an homage to her sacrifice for emigrating from Vietnam to the United States. It became clear during my freshman year that I would never measure up to valedictorian status as the only Asian American in my K-12 education.
My creative aptitude began as a way to escape the teenage world around me. The camera became my metaphorical wall, igniting an internal drive that led me on a journey across America in pursuit of my dreams in the arts and culture industry. The urgency to publish my life story within this site-specific installation grew as a response to the pandemic. This interactive work reflects on my thirty-year career in visual arts while transcending public labels and cultural boundaries.
Optimal viewing is fullscreen on a 27" monitor which closely emulate the actual printed newspaper.