Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Hau Pham

After Prom

My artistic practice is a depiction of the Asian feminine experience. Through examining the relationship with the object, my work explores my curiosity, guilt, and uncertainty when connecting value with identity. Utilizing oil on canvas, my paintings personify the object, and objectify the individual, creating a tension between the two as they become inseparable. Value is often placed in objects, and objects are considerably traced to identity. We use objects as indicators for how we see ourselves, or how we choose to understand others. The paintings capture several pieces that would be considered culturally and religiously significant, in specifics to the Vietnamese-Buddhist upbringing. But from an outsider’s perspective looking in, one might take them purely at face value, solely for their physical beauty, ignoring any other context. Likewise, there is a perception of the Asian women in the western world that reduces our worth to nothing more than a sexual item. In the same way that “foreign” artifacts from the east are housed in the museums of the countries that invaded them, Asian women are fetishized in such a way that is dehumanizing, and places strict value on how beautiful we are.There is a recognition that how I view myself will never align with how others view me. How should one choose to navigate with this knowledge? Through looking at the historical canon of the still life painting, my inner self and being is embodied in these works I have painted. The still life asks the reader to reconsider, to reframe how we perceive something we have assumed ourselves to already understand.Ultimately, these works are a reflection of myself, but are greatly part of a group identity that echoes the complexities and confusion connected to being both a woman and a person of Asian background.