“When my family escaped from Vietnam we left everything behind, including our family photographs. I hoped to find some of my photographs when I came back, so I went to a second-hand store that sold photographs to decorate film sets to see if I could find them. I never found any of them but I began to collect photos—even though they were not my family’s photos—because it was a way of getting closer to my family. The photographs came to represent the lives we had before and during the war, a way for me to reclaim what was lost. This was a time when the world only saw images of death in Vietnam but we did have a life there then. I actually have some very fond memories from the years during the war. Mot Coi Di Ve (Spending One’s Life Trying to Find One’s Way Home) is a quilt that brings together the stories of different people and the story of Vietnam during the war.

The texts include Vietnamese-Americans talking about their past lives in Vietnam and their current lives in America; letters written by a North Vietnamese soldier to his family; and excerpts from “The Tale of Kieu,” a much-loved Vietnamese epic poem about a young woman who had to sell herself in order to save her family. Her hope and dream was to return home. I think that many Vietnamese living in Europe, America, or Australia dream of the day when they can come back to Vietnam to live. The quilt is about Vietnam and all of these different journeys.

Originally I began by making selections of photos, but then I realized that this wasn’t right for the project because when I went to the store, I found bags and bags of photographs. It didn’t make sense to select just a few of them so I just bought large batches of them. I thought in this way the story would be more complete rather than be determined by my perspective. They became a collective memory for me. The question that strikes you immediately about these photographs is: where are all these people now? The photographs are all personal snapshots or wedding portraits, not the kind of things that you leave behind deliberately. Personal memories are so precious. When you look at the photographs you have to ask questions about where these people are today: did they survive the war? Did they leave the country? Or did they die in the war?“

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