Ngoc-Tran Vu (she/her) is a 1.5-generation Vietnamese-American multimedia artist and organizer whose socially engaged practice draws from her experience as a cultural connector, educator, and lightworker. Tran threads her social practice through photography, painting, sculpture and audio so that her art can resonate and engage audience with intentionality. Her work evokes discourse of familial ties, memories and rituals amongst themes of social justice and intersectionality. She is currently an adjunct faculty in Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Tran works across borders and is based in Boston's Dorchester community. www.tranvuarts.com | @TranVuArts

Tran Vu
Family Portrait
Acrylic on wood
13 inch diameter

I am a storyteller, connector, and an interpreter. As a Vietnamese American diasporic artist and organizer, I am passionate in creating spaces and platforms for cross-cultural storytelling and critical discourse. Accordingly, Family Portrait depicts my family as zodiac animals in the Vietnamese tradition and framework. My parents are represented in the center as the monkey and tiger while my siblings and I and fellow grandchildren all surround them as a pig, a rat, a baby tiger, a dragon, and a horse, etc. The animals all manifest their own meanings and symbolisms in threaded ways that call for further attention toward each.

My aim is to uplift my family in a way that reveals the humor, wit, and power through a non-Western cultural lens of family portrait. This work not only shares my identity in connection to my literal family roots and lineage but it further denotes my drive to visually preserve the stories and experiences of communities, particularly of immigrants and refugees. It is through much-needed stories and narratives filled with agency as Family Portrait that I hope to establish new modes of resistance to interrogate and counteract the dominant narrative.