Everyone has a story to share. Phong Huynh, a Los Angeles-based artist and educator who has exhibited her works internationally as well as completing public art commissions across Los Angeles County, came to Scripps College to share hers.
Huynh reflected on how her experience as a Southeast Asian refugee of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry coalesces with western beauty standards, whitewashing her cultural and racial identity. On Feb. 2 at the Humanities Auditorium at Scripps, Huynh displayed her fascinating artwork that deeply informs her Asian American identity as well as the experiences she faced as an immigrant in the United States.
After migrating to the United States from Vietnam at the age of eight, Huynh was surrounded by multicultural practices and languages growing up. Her diverse background influenced her artwork as she attended ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena and continued her studies at New York University. From there, she has served as Chair of the Public Art Commission for the city of South Pasadena, as well as being a recipient of the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship. Her artwork is currently represented by the Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles.
“White is right, white is pretty,’’ is what Huynh was told growing up. This idea of Asian women conforming to Western beauty standards such as pale skin and double eyelids is what sparked her art collection, “Pretty Hurts.”
While displaying her art piece titled “Nose-Sharpener” from a projector for the audience to see, Huynh explained its inspiration.
“I am interested in how contemporary plastic surgery on Asian women have not only obscured racial identity, but how it has also amplified the exoticism and Orientalist eroticism of Asian women,” she said.
Huynh referenced a tool called the nose-sharpener, which was specifically marketed towards Asians to sharpen their nose bridges. Inspired by this object, Huynh painted a portrait of a woman with prominent Asian features sitting in a feminine position, smoking a cigarette with one hand while using the other to sharpen her nose. Her small feet are bounded, one of the earliest forms of plastic surgery which contrasts with the Western beauty that the woman is trying to achieve.
Huynh wanted to create a collection in an “Asian style” artwork but display the gruesome process of what Asian women go through to appeal to Western beauty standards.
Her other collection, “Donut (W)hole,” shares the story of several Khmer kids who grew up in mom-and-pop donut shops across the United States. Dubbed the “Donut Kids,” Huynh drew these first and second generation “Khmericans” as cartoon figures on pink silkscreen paper with actual pictures of their donut shop as a backdrop, creating a “before and after” layering effect. The pink symbolizes the copious amounts of pink donut boxes that were sold throughout their time at the shop.
“Phung Huynh is a very notable artist, and I know that her work is not only reaching across other communities in color but also empowering her own community as well. Art can really perpetuate this kind of dialogue. The kind where people can talk, cry and are moved by the experience. That’s exactly what I want.”
“These donut shops represent a cultural space where refugees and immigrants reshape their lives in the process of negotiating, assimilating, and becoming American,” Huynh said. The stories of being taken to the shops at 3:00 a.m. and sleeping on top of flour bags to coming back after school to do homework are all prevalent in these paintings.
Kirby Lam PO ‘23 was one of the several attendees who was touched by Huynh’s paintings.
“It was a cool representation of the ways that their family background, as influenced by genocide, war and the American immigrant struggle, shaped their lives as adults.” Lam said. “Like Phung, I’m also Southeast Asian with family that emigrated from Southern China through Cambodia and Vietnam. While I haven’t really negotiated my Khmer American identity too much yet, it helped me think about how my life has also been shaped by this legacy of displacement and hope.”
Martha Gonzalez, professor of Chicanx-Latinx Studies at Scripps College was one of the organizers for this event. As an artist herself whose focus is on music through a social justice lens, Professor Gonzalez strives to bring other artists who also share a passion for raising minority representation in their fields and communities into this movement.
“Phung Huynh is a very notable artist, and I know that her work is not only reaching across other communities in color but also empowering her own community as well,” says Gonzalez. “Art can really perpetuate this kind of dialogue. The kind where people can talk, cry and are moved by the experience. That’s exactly what I want.”
It’s artists like Phung Huynh who share their stories that allow people from various communities to come together. To bring people from all different backgrounds and talk about these experiences while inspiring those to start participating in art.
“It is more than just donuts and pink boxes,” Huynh said. “It is about being able to tell our own stories before they are told for us. It is about sharing our humanity when we are veiled by inhumanity.”
An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled Phong Huynh as “Hyunh.” It has been updated to reflect the correct spelling. TSL regrets this error.