As an artist, former journalist, mother, Vietnam War refugee
and fervent social activist, Huong has communicated her
message for peace from a unique perspective for more
than 30 years.
Huong is a self-taught artist who has launched over 80
exhibits throughout Canada and the United States.
Collectively, all of Huong's paintings form a body of work
that is rare and perhaps unprecedented in addressing the
issues of war and peace. The works have been compared
to Pablo Picasso’s war protest, Guernica.
Huong was a 25-year-old mother and Vietnamese journalist when she escaped her war-torn
country. She was wearing just one shoe, carrying her infant son, as she embarked upon a
journey that took her from Saigon to Guam, to California, and finally Alaska. Along the way, she
kept searching for that symbolic missing shoe. She says she discovered it when she gave up
her pen and took up the artist’s brush
and fervent social activist, Huong has communicated her
message for peace from a unique perspective for more
than 30 years.
Huong is a self-taught artist who has launched over 80
exhibits throughout Canada and the United States.
Collectively, all of Huong's paintings form a body of work
that is rare and perhaps unprecedented in addressing the
issues of war and peace. The works have been compared
to Pablo Picasso’s war protest, Guernica.
Huong was a 25-year-old mother and Vietnamese journalist when she escaped her war-torn
country. She was wearing just one shoe, carrying her infant son, as she embarked upon a
journey that took her from Saigon to Guam, to California, and finally Alaska. Along the way, she
kept searching for that symbolic missing shoe. She says she discovered it when she gave up
her pen and took up the artist’s brush
ABOUT HUONG and Her Artobiography
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In the words of the Artist herself:
that there would be many who would need just one shoe. I kept running, my son clinging to me sharing my
sweat and my fear. We were lucky. We climbed into the boat to life. One mother, one child, one diaper,
one shoe.
screaming. Exile to the sea was bittersweet. I was thankful to be alive and with my year old child, but much
of my family was left behind, others were looking for their boat to freedom.
My Father, a commander in the South Vietnamese Army, was in a wretched stink hole of a Viet Cong
prison. He would spend 9 years there and upon release, died of cancer. My brothers, both dead, one by
the hand of the enemy, the other by his own hand. The fate of my husband, my mother, my sisters,
unknown.
Exile to the sea could not wash away the scars. I turned my back to the war and to my home. Six weeks
later, carried by hope and grit, I entered upon a miracle, the shores of California. I climbed out of that boat
and hit the ground running. Again. I wanted to sure I would not again be displaced. My life was lost behind
in a tortured land of carnage, brokenness, and decayed dreams. I had my child to keep me alive by
knowing I needed to keep him alive. I was and am a survivor, but at times I feel the guilt of surviving. I would
spend my life proving that I was worthy of it.
My art reflects my journey and the journey of the people of the 20th and 21 centuries. It reflects the
woundedness of us all. -- Houng, 2007
- By fate or by chance, on that ominous day in 1975, I was destined to begin the journey that
would forever change my life. I was a child of war in Vietnam. Today, I am a woman of peace. I
have grown into the wounds of that war. My art is my story, my artobiography and in each
unique way, the story of us all.
All of us alive today are children of war—the same war with different names. I believe you do
not have to be on the battlefield, in a jungle, or in the desert to be a victim of war. We carry
every war ever fought in our genes. That makes us all victims and survivors who in one way or
another have been wound by war. But I am an optimist. I believe human beings have the
capacity to create peace both within themselves and with others
- I remember all too well, running, pushing, falling. I remember hearing the blood throbbing
through my veins. I remember the grenades, the blinding explosions, piles of human rubble,
the vacant eyes staring ahead as my terror swelled.
that there would be many who would need just one shoe. I kept running, my son clinging to me sharing my
sweat and my fear. We were lucky. We climbed into the boat to life. One mother, one child, one diaper,
one shoe.
screaming. Exile to the sea was bittersweet. I was thankful to be alive and with my year old child, but much
of my family was left behind, others were looking for their boat to freedom.
My Father, a commander in the South Vietnamese Army, was in a wretched stink hole of a Viet Cong
prison. He would spend 9 years there and upon release, died of cancer. My brothers, both dead, one by
the hand of the enemy, the other by his own hand. The fate of my husband, my mother, my sisters,
unknown.
Exile to the sea could not wash away the scars. I turned my back to the war and to my home. Six weeks
later, carried by hope and grit, I entered upon a miracle, the shores of California. I climbed out of that boat
and hit the ground running. Again. I wanted to sure I would not again be displaced. My life was lost behind
in a tortured land of carnage, brokenness, and decayed dreams. I had my child to keep me alive by
knowing I needed to keep him alive. I was and am a survivor, but at times I feel the guilt of surviving. I would
spend my life proving that I was worthy of it.
My art reflects my journey and the journey of the people of the 20th and 21 centuries. It reflects the
woundedness of us all. -- Houng, 2007
"My art reflects my
journey and the
journey of the people
of the 20th and 21
centuries. It reflects
the woundedness of
us all."-- Huong
journey and the
journey of the people
of the 20th and 21
centuries. It reflects
the woundedness of
us all."-- Huong
In the Words of the Former Curator of Houng's Art, War and Peace Museum:
The tide of circumstance rose high on that autumn day in 2003. I, too, fell upon a miracle—The Art, War
and Peace Museum in Jensen Beach, Florida, featuring a Vietnamese artist, Huong. I had lived and
traveled extensively to Southeast Asia and was excited to find a museum that had Asian art. I was
unprepared for what I found. There were no laughing Buddhas, no Kuan Yins, no calligraphies.
Upon entering the gallery, beautiful utopian scenes of angelic women and children, picassoesque, in thick
pigments, that wrapped me into a calmness and peacefulness. But this was temporary. The beauty merged
into a room of sobering images sprayed with red bloody droplets. This was the War Room. In the
background you could hear the soft chanting of monks. Red candles burned on a bed of rice , each
representing those killed in the wars of the 20th Century.
Every war of the 20th Century and the wars of this century were hanging as a border reigning over the
room. Disturbing visions of the casualties of war—women and children, the dead and the dying. Huong bore
witness with palette and brush, not only to her life in hell, but to the destruction of families, the displacement
of families, and all the violence and greed and need for power that perpetuates more violence one
generation to another. It is an art that cuts into the heart and bowels of War.
Why in 1993 did Huong choose to return to that hell?
In Huong’s War Opus is a chronology embedded in a menacing world. It is a spectrum of color and texture,
both of canvas and thought. She is always conceptual and current. Each canvas is a layering over layering
of pigments, paints, and carvings. They are also protective. Should you excavate the layers, there at the
base is that frightened child searching for a place to hide from the blasts of grenades and bombs, not
knowing where she will be sleeping on any given night.
Huong is always intimate and visceral with her art. She evokes and provokes. She asks, “Do you look into
the eyes? What are they telling you? What do you want to ask them? Are they the accusing eyes of the
wounded and the dead? Who is to blame? In whose name?” We become conscious and uncomfortable with
the inhuman tortures, senseless killing. All canvasses beg for dialog. The painting asks you “why?” You
are forced to think about it. You are asked to speak.
The artist works the canvas like a surgeon. She digs and trowels, stabs and picks as the puncture wounds
reveal the cancer of war. She is always and everywhere that young journalist in Vietnam who trade off the
pen for the brush, who believes that art can do more to ignite than television’s talking heads.
It is always at times of self-evacuation, expiation for having survived that she is at her best –the canvas
telling the stories of the raped, the refugee, the orphaned, the maimed. These are the malignancies of war.
Her art calls us back to Picasso, both in style and in moral outrage remembering his words: “art is an
offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”
It is about education and public involvement, participation and accountability. She tells them: “I want to
uproot passivity and I want to disarm you, invite you to rearrange you vision. My aim is to move you out of
you comfort zone and re-educate. I am a social protest artist and a journalistic artist. I do not want spin, just
truth. I want the truth to explode off the canvas. --Sandi Wicina
About the Peace Mural
While Huong’s paintings capture every consequence of war so does the Peace Mural. It exposes the
consequences of war in all its nakedness—the “collateral damage” also known as human beings. It was
imperative that she bring the public into the art itself. It is about their lives too.
This monumental project has multiple themes: peace, war, Voices of Children dead or alive, the Voices of
the troops, Mothers in war, the Peace of all Nations, the Flag at War, the Displaced, the Orphaned and the
Refugees, and the Disabled. It is a combined effort. Each participant adds her own experience and
ideology and, in turn, is also shaped by the dialogue. How they see it and what they bring forth is the core of
Let’s Think Peace. Imagine. Just imagine, if this mural could travel to every state, have a place to set up
and encourage the citizens of our country to write their thoughts and beliefs or to add their art to the others
we could have a mural to embrace our country, our mandate for Peace. The People’s Mandate for Peace.
Huong has been invited by people around the country to bring this mural so people can sign on for peace
and make a difference.
The tide of circumstance rose high on that autumn day in 2003. I, too, fell upon a miracle—The Art, War
and Peace Museum in Jensen Beach, Florida, featuring a Vietnamese artist, Huong. I had lived and
traveled extensively to Southeast Asia and was excited to find a museum that had Asian art. I was
unprepared for what I found. There were no laughing Buddhas, no Kuan Yins, no calligraphies.
Upon entering the gallery, beautiful utopian scenes of angelic women and children, picassoesque, in thick
pigments, that wrapped me into a calmness and peacefulness. But this was temporary. The beauty merged
into a room of sobering images sprayed with red bloody droplets. This was the War Room. In the
background you could hear the soft chanting of monks. Red candles burned on a bed of rice , each
representing those killed in the wars of the 20th Century.
Every war of the 20th Century and the wars of this century were hanging as a border reigning over the
room. Disturbing visions of the casualties of war—women and children, the dead and the dying. Huong bore
witness with palette and brush, not only to her life in hell, but to the destruction of families, the displacement
of families, and all the violence and greed and need for power that perpetuates more violence one
generation to another. It is an art that cuts into the heart and bowels of War.
Why in 1993 did Huong choose to return to that hell?
- “When I arrived I painted the beauty and opportunity of my new life of promise. I could not continue
my life as a journalist because of the language barrier. I went to Alaska and I learned to carve and
paint with the Eskimos. This is how I survived. I painted beautiful pictures that people wanted for
decoration. I was able to start up galleries of my work and traveled the country selling them.“
- In 1991 when the fist Iraq War began, my back was no longer to the war. I was face to face with it and
my demons again. The numbed grief inside was leaking out. The memories poured out an ache in
me that was beyond my strength. I would have to take responsibility for this call to action, justice and
a sense of mission. And so the memories bleed through every canvas. When I began painting in
Alaska, I did it to stay alive. When I started to paint the War Pieces, I am painting to help others to
stay alive.”
In Huong’s War Opus is a chronology embedded in a menacing world. It is a spectrum of color and texture,
both of canvas and thought. She is always conceptual and current. Each canvas is a layering over layering
of pigments, paints, and carvings. They are also protective. Should you excavate the layers, there at the
base is that frightened child searching for a place to hide from the blasts of grenades and bombs, not
knowing where she will be sleeping on any given night.
Huong is always intimate and visceral with her art. She evokes and provokes. She asks, “Do you look into
the eyes? What are they telling you? What do you want to ask them? Are they the accusing eyes of the
wounded and the dead? Who is to blame? In whose name?” We become conscious and uncomfortable with
the inhuman tortures, senseless killing. All canvasses beg for dialog. The painting asks you “why?” You
are forced to think about it. You are asked to speak.
The artist works the canvas like a surgeon. She digs and trowels, stabs and picks as the puncture wounds
reveal the cancer of war. She is always and everywhere that young journalist in Vietnam who trade off the
pen for the brush, who believes that art can do more to ignite than television’s talking heads.
It is always at times of self-evacuation, expiation for having survived that she is at her best –the canvas
telling the stories of the raped, the refugee, the orphaned, the maimed. These are the malignancies of war.
Her art calls us back to Picasso, both in style and in moral outrage remembering his words: “art is an
offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”
It is about education and public involvement, participation and accountability. She tells them: “I want to
uproot passivity and I want to disarm you, invite you to rearrange you vision. My aim is to move you out of
you comfort zone and re-educate. I am a social protest artist and a journalistic artist. I do not want spin, just
truth. I want the truth to explode off the canvas. --Sandi Wicina
About the Peace Mural
While Huong’s paintings capture every consequence of war so does the Peace Mural. It exposes the
consequences of war in all its nakedness—the “collateral damage” also known as human beings. It was
imperative that she bring the public into the art itself. It is about their lives too.
This monumental project has multiple themes: peace, war, Voices of Children dead or alive, the Voices of
the troops, Mothers in war, the Peace of all Nations, the Flag at War, the Displaced, the Orphaned and the
Refugees, and the Disabled. It is a combined effort. Each participant adds her own experience and
ideology and, in turn, is also shaped by the dialogue. How they see it and what they bring forth is the core of
Let’s Think Peace. Imagine. Just imagine, if this mural could travel to every state, have a place to set up
and encourage the citizens of our country to write their thoughts and beliefs or to add their art to the others
we could have a mural to embrace our country, our mandate for Peace. The People’s Mandate for Peace.
Huong has been invited by people around the country to bring this mural so people can sign on for peace
and make a difference.
“For me, as long as
there is war, Vietnam
will never be over.
President Bush said
on 9/11 that the global
war on terror was 'the
inescapable calling of
our generation.' I
believe “the
inescapable calling of
our generation” is
Peace. It’s your
choice. -- Huong
there is war, Vietnam
will never be over.
President Bush said
on 9/11 that the global
war on terror was 'the
inescapable calling of
our generation.' I
believe “the
inescapable calling of
our generation” is
Peace. It’s your
choice. -- Huong
“How did I get so lucky to have my heart
awakened to others and their suffering?”
-- Pema Chodron
awakened to others and their suffering?”
-- Pema Chodron
"And so the
memories bleed
through every
canvas. When I
began painting in
Alaska, I did it to stay
alive. When I started
to paint the War
Pieces, I am painting
to help others to stay
alive." -- Huong
memories bleed
through every
canvas. When I
began painting in
Alaska, I did it to stay
alive. When I started
to paint the War
Pieces, I am painting
to help others to stay
alive." -- Huong
"Huong's
artobiographical
work createds a
venue for dialogue to
talk about issues of
war and peace." --
Sandi Wicina
artobiographical
work createds a
venue for dialogue to
talk about issues of
war and peace." --
Sandi Wicina
The Peace Mural is
both deeply spiritual
and political at the
same time. It evokes
a sense of quiet
sacred space, but is
charged with latent
discourse that it calls forth from those who view it. -- John Frank
both deeply spiritual
and political at the
same time. It evokes
a sense of quiet
sacred space, but is
charged with latent
discourse that it calls forth from those who view it. -- John Frank
