Artistic reflections around war, much like war itself, have been an awfully male-dominated affair. The Women’s Media Center cites an estimate that only 15 to 20 percent of news photographers are women—a field with very few female figures, such as Lee Miller and Gerda Taro, gaining widespread fame. There is typically less mainstream recognition of wars in the global South compared to wars in the global North.
Vietnamese-American artist Tiffany Chung aims to change this dynamic. She probes into her own past and the historical relationship between Vietnam and the USA in her exhibition, Vietnam, Past Is Prologue.
Vietnam, Past Is Prologue explores immigration, conflict, and shifting geographies in the wake of the Vietnam War through multimedia pieces. These pieces showcase an authentic account of the legacy of the Vietnam War from the eyes of Vietnamese-Americans and promote a need for lasting peace, reflecting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions.
The exhibition’s pieces are tied together by a meticulously drawn map on the walls of the exhibit, a piece titled Remapping History: an autopsy of a battle, an excavation of a man’s past. This map begins with Chung’s look into her father’s story, who fought for the South Vietnamese military during the war. His story unfolds through found materials such as home videos, archival photographs, and audio recordings.
Through these pieces, Chung tells the story of a man who became a war prisoner for 14 years and decided to move to the United States when he was released in 1984. Subsequently, he became a beloved pastor of a large community of Vietnamese-Americans in Texas.
Remapping History: an autopsy of a battle, an excavation of a man’s past, gives its viewers direct access to the intimate life of a man who was directly involved in the Vietnam War. It showcases how complex of an issue war is and how it would propel someone to make a drastic cross-continent move.
From her father’s story, Chung branches out with her other pieces in the exhibit to tell stories from other Vietnamese people whose lives have intersected with hers and her father’s, whether or not they reside in Vietnam. Eventually Chung expands even further still into the global migratory effects of the Vietnam War through her pieces.
The next seminal piece in the exhibit is Recipes of Necessity, a series of interviews of a group of Vietnamese people who have lived through the war and deliberately chose to stay in the country. In the piece, they shared their experiences of living through the Vietnamese Communist government (1975-1986), a tumultuous period marked by socio-political upheaval and economic troubles.
Chung’s piece Reconstructing an Exodus History: flight routes from camps and of ODP cases concludes the exhibit with a grand twelve-foot-long map of the world. This map, delicately embroidered by Chung, charts the international escape route of the Vietnamese people through the ODP (Orderly Departure Program), which gave them refugee statuses.
At just a single glance, viewers are able to take in the sheer impact of war and to see just how far Vietnamese people had to flee. The exhibit captures the weight of this reality: that they had no choice but to restart their lives on foreign land with little to nothing, producing a powerful case against future wars.