The Women of the Vietnamese American Arts Scene in Orange County
With over 60% of its population made up of diverse ethnicities, Orange County is home to a broad range of culturally-based organizations and artists. A few have been instrumental in nurturing arts and culture since the early '90s. Historically, Vietnamese and Latino immigrants were only considered part of the labor industry. Today, both ethnic communities are majorities in various cities in the region, equally contributing to the economy and civic leadership as well as entertainment in the arts. As a way to build community and cultural relevance, nonprofit organizations, like the Vietnamese American Arts and Letter Association and El Centro Cultural de Mexico, have been instrumental in celebrating traditional folk arts, local artists and curating contemporary art entertainment in their respective ethnic communities. With the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam and Little Saigon extending through five cities, VAALA continues to be a source of empowerment for the arts across the county.
VAALA was founded in 1991 by a group of Vietnamese American journalists, artists and friends to fill a void and provide a space for artists to express themselves as a newly resettled immigrant community. With over 30 years of arts and culture events, they provide year-round programming, including film festivals, art exhibitions, book signings, concerts, theater performances, art contests, and classes. VAALA has also hosted and created visibility for renowned names like playwright and producer Susan Lieu, novelist and Pulitzer Prize award recipient Viet Thanh Nguyen, and documentary filmmaker and cinematographer Bao Nguyen, along with continuous support for local artists.
"My dad, Lê Đình Điểu, was one of the co-founders, a journalist — not an artist — very well connected in the Vietnamese community here and worldwide," recalls Ysa Le, a clinical pharmacist and currently the executive director of VAALA. "I enjoyed meeting my dad's friends who were writers and artists, and attending their events in those earlier years…I joined VAALA as a tribute to my dad after he passed and the elder members wanted to revamp VAALA in 2000, initially I said I would join for two years, now twenty-something years later I'm still with VAALA."
Like Le, local artists Kiều Chinh and Ann Phong would have never thought they would be part of the art scene in Orange County back during the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Although their lives differ in art careers and ethnic origins, both identify as two-time refugees. Despite each one accumulating over 40 years in the U.S., both agree they are often overlooked as artists in the region by those not associated with the Vietnamese American community. Nevertheless, their lives are compelling counternarratives for their ethnicity and gender in and out of Vietnam. Their journeys to Orange County aren't meant to represent a monolithic refugee story nor the sole experience that defines them as women artists, but the history they carry in their artform bridges the past in Vietnam with the future in Southern California for all ethnicities.
Kiều Chinh: An Artist in Exile
Currently residing in Huntington Beach, Kiều Chinh sits in her home office pointing to a wall covered with famous actors and producers while her new memoir titled "Kiều Chinh: An Artist in Exile" (Văn Học Press 2021) lays on her lap. Off to the side in a corner far from reach is an Emmy award she received for the 1996 documentary called "Kiều Chinh: A Journey Home." The film is about her return to Saigon to reunite with her brother and visit her father's grave after 41 years of being away. She is a legendary Vietnamese American actress with nearly seven decades of international contributions to the motion picture industry from: Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, India, Australia and Canada. While sipping on tea and smiling calmly, she recounts that she spent a couple of days incarcerated in Singapore as a result of an expired work visa. In mid-April 1975, she had been in Singapore filming a movie; it seemed feasible to return to Vietnam. A week later, she fled the country in a panic with only her purse in hand. She gently laughs when describing that a guard only recognized her in the Female Magazine from April 21, 1975 after she restyled her hair, applied lipstick and posed exactly like the centerfold image the issue included of her. Soon after, the guard allowed her to make a phone call. Under advice from embassy representatives and because she couldn't obtain refugee status until the fall of her country, she spent days flying from plane to plane before she could enter Canada on April 30th, 1975. About a week later and after working on a chicken farm to make enough money for frantic phone calls, Kiều Chinh came to the U.S. under the sponsorship of actress Tippi Hedren (also mother to famous actress Melanie Griffith). She still credits the kindness of several Hollywood industry leaders for her success in this nation.
"As I look back on almost 50 years living in exile in this land of freedom," wrote Kiều Chinh in her memoir. "...I remind myself that I am not the only one. Millions of Vietnamese have been scattered all over the globe. Each of us is a unique story…"
Kiều Chinh's career grew expansively in the U.S. in the years that followed. However, she proudly admits every acting position big or small — stereotypical or not — was to help gain benefits from the actors' guild and create a home in her new country. She appeared in 45 feature films and television shows, among them the TV movies "The Children of An Lac" (1980), "The Letter" (1982) and "The Girl Who Spelled Freedom" (1986), and films like "Hamburger Hill" (1987), "Gleaming the Cube" (1988), "Riot" (1997) and "Catfish in Black Bean Sauce" (1999). She also had a recurring role on ABC's Vietnam war series "China Beach'' from 1989 to 1991 and the Fox TV show "21" in 2008. Her best known role in Hollywood is of the character of Suyuan Woo in Wayne Wang's "The Joy Luck Club'' in 1993, a film based on the book by Amy Tan and about the relationship between Chinese immigrant mothers and their Chinese American daughters. Yet, those who can remember the '70s and the TV show "M*A*S*H," might also recognize Kiều Chinh as the Korean villager Hawkeye falls in love with during an episode named "In Love and War."
With such a life story, Kiều Chinh was drawn to give back to the Vietnamese community and the arts. She co-founded the Vietnam Children's Fund (VCF) a non-profit organization along with the late Lewis Puller Jr., and journalist Terry Anderson. Since its inception in 1993, VCF built 50 schools in Vietnam providing education for more than 25,000 students annually. Additionally, she was one of the co-founders of VAALA who also volunteered for the inaugural Viet Film Fest (VFF). Established in 2003, VFF is the largest international Vietnamese film festival in the world, featuring films by persons of Vietnamese descent or productions that focus on the Vietnamese experience.
Last year, her memoir "Kiều Chinh: An Artist in Exile" was published by Văn Học Press and has been well reviewed and sold throughout Vietnamese communities around the world. Currently, available in Vietnamese and English, her memoir is in the process of being translated into various languages. Kiều Chinh's body of work is a triumphant example of a woman of color making a name for herself against all odds in the arts industry.
Ann Phong: Re-Evaluating Normal
As a 1995 Master of Fine Art graduate from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) and an established professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona for over 22 years, Ann Phong admits she became an artist in Orange County without her mother ever knowing. Her parents first fled communist China and she was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1957. In 1975, she remained behind as others left, her sister and boyfriend (now husband) were among the 125,000 Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the U.S. that year. Phong stayed in Vietnam to serve as a teacher for three years on her own. Eventually, she too decided to leave and sought refuge in Malaysia. She was able to secure sponsorship to the U.S. from the same church that sponsored her sister years before.
Prior to her mother's passing, she was en route to be a dentist but never told her mother she had changed her studies to art. Phong attributes her passion for the visual arts to sibling rivalry. Her older sister was always known as the "smart one" and she too wanted to excel in something but knew it wasn't going to be in the sciences.
"As firsts in this country…no one would congratulate an artist inside our community, parents want us to be doctors," said Phong. "Art goes beyond the color scheme, now as the older generation we are not just a stepping stone for the younger generation, we are a bridge for them to cross over and look from two sides, also look to the front and back, to do more than set expectations."
Before arriving in the U.S. in 1982, she was sent to the Philippines to improve her English but says she never lost her accent, to this day it represents her independence. Phong identifies as "boat people" who came over by sea and attributes her appreciation for humanity to all the places that served as temporary shelter, including the ocean. These days, her art studio is a makeshift loft in her home in the suburbs of Cerritos, where Asians account for nearly 65% of the population. While offering turon (Filipino fried banana rolls) with green tea, Phong candidly states the recent COVID-19 pandemic impacted her mental health tremendously, not only as an artist but as a Asian American living in a time of hate towards Asians in the nation.
For over four decades, Phong's paintings offered a glimpse of global challenges that reshaped her as an individual. She has participated in more than 200 solo and group shows and been widely exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Paris, and as far as Japan. Phong's new body of work, which is featured in the exhibition "Re-Evaluating Normal" at the CSUF Nicholas & Lee Begovich Gallery, focuses on the crises amplified during the past two years of the pandemic. Through expressive abstraction, vibrant hues and intense impasto textures with embedded found objects, Phong's large-scale paintings contemplate memories of migration; the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; contemporary social, political and racial tensions; and the negative impact on the environment. Although she has shown in various art spaces in Orange County, including the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in 2018, she will be the first Asian American female artist to exhibit a solo show on-campus at the Begovich Gallery.
"Ann Phong's solo exhibition is also essential as part of a more extensive dialogue in contemporary art," explains Jennifer Frias, a Filipina American curator and director of the Begovich Gallery. "Because Asian American women artists have historically been excluded from appropriate representation in art and often neglected from American art history."
Like Ysa Le and Kiều Chinh, Phong was also a VAALA board member who once organized art exhibits, readings and the annual Viet Film Fest. She served as president of the O.C.-based nonprofit organization from 2009 to February 2018, nearly a decade. Ann Phong and her large-scale works have made an impact on the next generation, like arts administrator Le and curator Frias. In due time, her abstract images will find a way to convey a message to those outside of the Asian community, hopefully leading to acknowledgement as an arts educator and contemporary visual artist in O.C. history.
"Through VAALA, we want to reclaim our identity, take FOB back from the negative meaning, it could be 'friends of Bolsa,'" Le continues to explain. "I'm not an artist but I know art can tell stories, art can bring people together and express feelings, like Kiều Chinh and Ann Phong do in their artforms. If we don't create our stories, they wouldn't be told otherwise from our own identity, through our language, culture and shared history."
As minoritized groups in Orange County continue to grow as the majority in population, the local arts landscape and larger institutions are also challenged to be more inclusive and equally intentional. Culturally relevant organizations are expanding beyond traditional folk art to offer visibility and a career platform for various artists in different mediums. These multigenerational efforts unite artists, arts administrators and patrons of the arts to appreciate artists of color in the industry, while also redefining art and U.S. history regionally and globally.
