About the Exhibit
In Vietnamese, the word nước translates to water, nhà translates to home, and both words translate to country. When you remove nước from the Southeast Asian body, what’s left is our salt stained skin—a reminder that we’ve crossed oceans to leave the nước that nourished us, the nước that was our livelihood, and the nước nhà we once called home. Home is the place we come back to, the place we miss when we leave, and the place we return to for comfort.
Salt Stained: HOME is a showcase for communal storytelling through works of art by four Southeast Asian artists whose stories challenge dominant narratives, whose salt-stained bodies stayed afloat as we cast out our ropes and held onto one another, leaving behind a legacy of ripples.
Artists featured:
- Cynthia Cao
- Josiah Heng
- Jackie Huynh
- Amanda Pascual
- Community Art Project created with VietUnity and Chopsticks Alley Art
Performances:
- Vietnamese Folk Opera Performance with "Tiếng Vọng Quê Hương - The Echo of the Homeland"
- Brandon Luu, Poet
- Kristina Robertson, Poet
- Branden Nguyễn, Acoustic Guitar
- Jonathan Tran, Acoustic Guitar
- Viet Steps - Dance Troupe
Salt Stained is part of New Terrains: Mobility and Migration, a series of cross-disciplinary exhibitions and programs that explore how bodies move through social and political spaces in Silicon Valley beginning in the spring of 2018 and continuing into 2019. The project addresses timely topics such as bicycle transportation and urban planning, navigation and orientation, public protest, immigration, and migration. Details are online at www.newterrains.org.
