Art Review : Views of Vietnamese American Psyche

Americans finally came to grips with that profound, self-inflicted wound called the Vietnam War. It was a nasty, immoral mess, but we can now stand before Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, know our soldiers fought bravely, weep and try to heal ourselves.

An exhibition at Cal State Fullerton reminds us that another legacy of that conflict took the form of tens of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants who, utterly displaced, came here hoping to piece together decent lives. It started nearly 20 years ago. Now they are Americans too.

Orange County has the largest Vietnamese population anywhere outside their homeland. Close to 100,000 Vietnamese live in enclaves from Westminster to Anaheim. The largest, nicknamed “Little Saigon,” has more than 1,000 Vietnamese and Chinese businesses.

Cal State Fullerton pays praiseworthy attention to this phenomenon in “A New Generation: Vietnamese American Contemporary Art.” Organized in tandem by co-curators Trang Nguyen and Farid Hassan, it includes the work of 10 artists and comes with a slender catalogue. The essay was written by Chor Swang Ngin, who ponders the question of assimilation.

A scan of the work suggests that these artists are culturally assimilated. Work is driven by a raw energy and a sense of chaos that comes from styles ranging from Abstract Expressionism through installation and performance. The ensemble puts one in mind of the work of Jon Borofsky. So, fine. Since that’s all good American stuff, the artists must all be assimilated, so everything’s OK and we can all go home.

No, we can’t.

The best way to get a wrong answer is to ask a wrong question. For one thing, Western art styles were practiced in South Vietnam, so that is not mentally new to the work. In modern times, all artists have been in the business of being unassimilated. All artists become self-elected outsiders by their choice of profession. If they are social critics, it’s not because they set out to act that role, it’s because they are just being themselves, which is rare to the point of being taboo in most cultures.

We may be able to tell something about the collective state of the immigrant Vietnamese psyche from this work, but if we can it’s because common experience has been uncommonly absorbed.

Some artists seem to emphasize the Vietnamese experience. Dong Phan makes ripped and weathered abstract collages out of what might be the debris of a wrecked town after a bombing. The work bears a generic resemblance to art made by Italian Alberto Burri and others who lived through the devastation of World War II. Toi Hoang and Viet Nguyen pursue similar themes.

Man Bui’s installation “No Near” is made of fabric and wood and calls to mind parachutes, bogs and blood. It feels like a cultural reaction but becomes unsettlingly intimate in photographs where the artist seems to accuse himself of being intolerant, cynical and hypocritical. It’s said that one result of terror can be a feeling of guilt on the part of the victim.

All this work is individualized by embodying the humanity of mixed emotions. There is a lyrical quality of hope to Ann Phong’s Expressionist paintings that belies imagery of boats, bombs and swamps. Darlene Nguyen-Ely fashions miniature assemblages of wrecked shrines. Their mournfulness is made all the more poignant by poetic restraint.

Other artists seem to address the American experience.

Chi Le makes racks of little series paintings about daily life here with its cars, bikes and fast-food emporiums. They have some of the folk-art feel of Mexican ex-votos and some of the same resigned humor. Their collective title (slightly bowdlerized for a family newspaper) is “Same Bull, Different Day.” Thai Bui waxes philosophical and a bit ironic in neo-primitive sculpture incorporating tattered books. “Tool for a Newcomer” is in the form of an ax with an English dictionary for a blade. Thy Nguyen’s installation is called “Progeny.” It consists of a rocking mechanism, projected slides and anatomical wall drawings depicting human internal organs and genitalia. It could as easily have been inspired by private obsession as by social conditions.

Photographer Han V. Nguyen takes a posture of anthropological detachment in his “Ancestor Series.” Images are made up of archive-style montages covering everything from the skeletons of ancient hominids to works of master art. A particularly mordant image shows a display case including models and death masks of peoples of many races. It’s called “Harmony.”

Most crimes are essentially similar, they say, but all murders are different. It’s true that the violence of Vietnam was singular, as was that of the Holocaust or Hiroshima.

All, however, leave a dark residue of haunted minds. At that level the terror universalizes itself. Whether the demons of the individual mind were placed there by warring nations or rotten parents, they require the same courage in the coping. Here it is done with uncommon frankness, grace and fortitude.

* Cal State Fullerton, Main Art Gallery, Monday through Friday, noon to 4 p.m.; Sundays, 2 to 5 p.m.; closed Saturdays. Through May 15. Suggested donation, $3. (714) 773-3262.