Phung Huynh is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator with a practice in drawing, painting, public art, and community engagement. Her work investigates notions of cultural identity from a kaleidoscopic perspective, a continual shift of idiosyncratic translations. The contemporary American landscape is where she explores how cultural ideas are imported, disassembled, and then reconstructed. Her reflections and research have guided Huynh to re-stitch traditional Asian iconography within the loosely woven fabric of American popular culture to call attention to [mis]interpretations and [re]appropriations. There is a purposeful “Chinatown” aesthetic in Huynh’s paintings, alluding to kitsch souvenirs that tourists purchase and the commodification of eastern icons into tchotchkes. Huynh considers how cultural authenticity disintegrates within a capitalist framework to challenge the viewer with a western-leaning perspective.
Huynh’s current work is informed by her experience as a refugee of Cambodian and Chinese descent from Vietnam. Inspired by her family’s migration story, personal research, and interviews with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees and immigrants, Huynh makes drawings and prints on pink donut boxes and cross-stitches images of personalized California license plates with unanglicized names. Her work unpacks the complexities of diaspora, immigration, displacement, and assimilation. Each drawing or cross-stitched piece is meant to be a sensitive portrayal of a unique personal story. Close to 90% of California’s donut shops are mom-and-pop businesses run by Cambodian immigrants or Cambodian Americans (Khmericans). The trend that links pink boxes with donuts can be traced back to the Khmerican donut ecosystem.
Huynh’s current work is informed by her experience as a refugee of Cambodian and Chinese descent from Vietnam. Inspired by her family’s migration story, personal research, and interviews with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees and immigrants, Huynh makes drawings and prints on pink donut boxes and cross-stitches images of personalized California license plates with unanglicized names. Her work unpacks the complexities of diaspora, immigration, displacement, and assimilation. Each drawing or cross-stitched piece is meant to be a sensitive portrayal of a unique personal story. Close to 90% of California’s donut shops are mom-and-pop businesses run by Cambodian immigrants or Cambodian Americans (Khmericans). The trend that links pink boxes with donuts can be traced back to the Khmerican donut ecosystem.