Headshot of woman.
The Department of Art presents, “Vietnam and the Diaspora; Visual Art in a Transnational Context” with artist Genevieve Erin O’Brien as part of the
2013 Visual Arts Thinkers Series
on Monday, March 18, 2013 at 7 p.m. in Moulton Center, 213.

The artist will introduce the contemporary art scene in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnam, as well as the work of Vietnamese visual artists in the diaspora and she will trace the transnational influences in the art making practice of Vietnamese and Viet Kiéu (overseas Vietnamese).

O’Brien is a Vietnamese/Irish/American artist, culinary adventurer, community organizer, and popular educator and lives and works in Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She holds an MFA in Studio Art/Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and  uses performance, video and installation, to explore notions of “home” and “homeland”.

As a mixed race child of a Vietnamese immigrant mother and an Irish-American father, she investigates issues such as war and memory, transnational identity and belonging, and multiple identities and its attendant baggage. Using food, humor, narrative and conceptual structures, she develops work that is invested in collective healing from trauma, whether personal or inherited to further social justice and cultural understanding.

This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please call (714) 997-6729.

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