Thien-Kieu Lam
Escape by Sea, 2023
Pochoir on strips of paper woven together and stitched with linen thread, mounted on wooden armature 11" x 11" x 3/8"
An exploration of how memory functions, especially within the context of reconstructing history. This imagery is based on a 1975 photo of Southeast Asian refugees being rescued at sea, but in its abstraction–the loss of details or memory–this moment could be any migration story in modern history.
Thien-Kieu Lam
Refugee Processing Center, 2021
Pochoir on both sides of paper, with collage figures stitched with linen thread 18" x 13"
An exploration of personal and collective history, and how we remember, misremember, and interpret those stories. Based on a portrait of my mother’s family at Fort Chaffee, which served as one of four processing centers in 1975 for refugees of the Vietnamese civil war.
