‘In the Theme of Home’ tells the story of displacement through the immigrant lens

Hadia Moosvi, Contributing Writer

A TV rests on the wall of a dark, black room as the proverb, “Home is where one buries their umbilical cord,” fades in on the screen. A person is seen cutting a bamboo tree from the ground that is tied to their body by what resembles a bloodstained rope. 

Surrounding the TV are elements from the video — dimly lit bamboo trees in the corners of the room, a bloodstained rope meant to resemble an umbilical cord, a small tree in a glass display case and a wood crafted axe that sits beside the glass box.

Hien Nguyen, a VCUarts senior studying sculpture, created two forms of visual work for her exhibition titled “In the Theme of Home,” which tells the story of displacement and losing a sense of home through the lens of an immigrant.

The exhibition is being showcased at The Anderson, an on-campus VCUarts gallery, until Oct. 2. It includes both a performance video, “Somewhere the Driftwood Will Land” and an installation, “Up-Rooting.” 

Nguyen was born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam, and said the concept of the installation is centered around her personal experience after moving to America at the age of 17, where she grappled with the question “what is home?”

“At one point I realized my parents’ house is their home but not my home, and Vietnam is no longer my home. I’ve been so far from it,” Nguyen said. “Here, I can try to fit in, but in the back of my mind I am an immigrant and I’m a person of color. I was being challenged like, ‘Okay so, what is home?’”

Nguyen said her first time thinking of the concept was during her sophomore year when she visited her parents’ home in the suburbs of Virginia. There, she passed by a bush of bamboo trees that reminded her of Vietnam, which inspired her to use them in the exhibition.

“It’s a metaphor for my motherland country,” Nguyen said. “The image of the bamboo tree had appeared in a lot of Vietnamese art and literature for a thousand years. We use bamboo to build houses and contain fruit.” 

Alongside using bamboo as a metaphor for her homeland, Nguyen said she used a rope which resembles an umbilical cord to show the Southeast Asian ritual of umbilical cord burial. The performance video also shows the cord being cut and regrown, which she said is a metaphor for the trauma involved when moving away from a home country. 

“I think it’s very clean and well put together as an installation. I felt like all my senses were engaged when I walked in,” said Aida Lizalde, an exhibit attendee and VCU graduate student. “So there’s a lot of technical skills that went into the pieces.” 

Nguyen then tied all the elements into the proverb she used for the performance video, “Home is where one buries their umbilical cord.”

“Every time I turned to my parents’ house, I’d see the bamboo and the proverb kept spiraling in my brain,” Nguyen said. “And I’m like, ‘why am I thinking about this thing so much?’ It’s like an itch that you’ve got to scratch or make work for.”

While the exhibit was independent from her classwork, Nguyen said her experience at VCU helped in creating her work and establishing the overall concept of her exhibition the past three years. Nguyen submitted her work for consideration to The Anderson in the summer of 2021 before it was approved by the gallery. 

She said certain pieces in the exhibit, including the axe and the performance video, were assignments from her previous classes at VCU. 

Nguyen said her craft professor, Vivian Chiu, and sculpture professor, Kendall Buster, played a role in helping her as an artist. With their help, she was able to get experience in using certain materials, such as plexiglass, to perfect the work in her exhibition.

Buster said it is critical that Nguyen’s work is being showcased at The Anderson, so her experience can be heard.

“The Anderson gallery gave a student who is definitely stellar in terms of their output, productivity, seriousness; gave them this opportunity to have an exhibition of this kind,” Buster said. “It talks about this idea of being uprooted. But imagine talking about being uprooted through the metaphor of a bamboo tree that has been ripped off. I think it speaks so eloquently.”

Lizalde said Nguyen’s work in the exhibit impacted her as a multimedia artist and graduate student herself.

“It challenges me to make sure my work is up to standard,” Lizalde said. “It’s exciting to see that undergraduate students are actually getting enough space and a platform to put their work out there.” 

Nguyen said she hopes her work can make anyone going through the same experiences, including VCU students and the overall Richmond community, to feel as if they are not alone in feeling displaced.

“I was hoping seeing my work would give the people who are a lot like me — in a situation where they’re having an existential crisis — that comfort of knowing like, ‘Okay, I’m not the only one feeling like something’s messed up,’” Nguyen said.