On Refuge: 50 Years of Recomposition
Curated by Audrey Bùi
Exhibition dates: October 4 – October 24, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 4, 6–10 PM
Gallery Hours: Monday-Saturday, 12-8 PM
Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (OCCCA)
117 N Sycamore St, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Gallery Hours: Thursday–Sunday, 12–5 PM
Santa Ana, CA — The Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) proudly presents On Refuge: 50 Years of Recomposition through its Gallery Beyond Walls initiative, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Vietnamese American community. On view from October 4 to October 24, 2025 at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, the exhibition brings together 13 multi-generational Vietnamese artists whose works explore the evolving landscape of Vietnamese identity in America.
Featuring artists Angela Anh Nguyen, An Hà, Anh Dao Ha, Anh Nguyen, Ann Lê, Đan Lynh Phạm, Dinh Q. Lê, Felisa Nguyễn, Hùng Lê, Huyen Tran, Phung Huynh, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Vivian Tran, On Refuge reflects on the past five decades while envisioning the future. Through painting, photography, textiles, media, and mixed media installations, the exhibition engages with “how the Vietnamese American community is carried, embodied, and continued”.
Curator Audrey Bui describes the exhibition’s thematic focus: “Recomposition, a strong theme in the shown works, manifests in different homages to family, community, physical cities, photographs, textiles, media, and lasting, but also, changing legacies. There is an intentional blurring and distortion of familial structures, traditions, and cultural objects that both manipulate and investigate memory in a way that prompts generative conversations on language and inheritance.”
On Refuge: 50 Years of Recomposition invites viewers to engage with works that hold legacy and resistance hand in hand, provoking the honoring and reworking of collective memory while reflecting on how the Vietnamese American story is carried forward through continuity and change.
About the Exhibition
Optimistically, 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Vietnamese American community. To reflect over the last 50 years, the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) ’s Gallery Beyond Walls works to acknowledge the ever changing terrain of being Vietnamese in its different contexts.
On Refuge: 50 Years of Recomposition highlights 13 varied, multi-generational Vietnamese artists, and their work that articulates the nuances of the Vietnamese American community today. The featured works collaboratively hold both legacy and resistance hand in hand, provoking the honoring and reworking of collective memory.
With fondness, On Refuge takes the essence of memory, in conjunction with growth, to show the things that were transplanted from Vietnam to the United States and how they have modified while staying rooted in community – albeit in different formats. As a reflection of the last fifty years, the show works to create a space in which individuality and perspective through the personal interpretation of “Vietnameseness” in America is both felt and worn.
Recomposition, a strong theme in the shown works, manifests in different homages to family, community, physical cities, photographs, textiles, media, and lasting, but also, changing legacies. There is an intentional blurring and distortion of familial structures, traditions, and cultural objects that both manipulate and investigate memory in a way that prompts generative conversations on language and inheritance. The works capitalize on how the inheritance of physical objects and cultural memories can contest the notions of rootedness and spirituality.
With the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Vietnamese American community, and what fifty years could possibly mean – On Refuge: 50 Years of Recomposition reckons with the return of cultural ownership, the entanglement of history, and how the Vietnamese American community is carried, embodied, and continued.
About the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association
VAALA was founded in 1991 by a group of Vietnamese American journalists, artists, and friends to fill a void in the community and provide a space for newly resettled immigrant artists to express themselves. VAALA’s mission is to connect and enrich communities through Vietnamese art and culture. Historically run entirely by volunteers, VAALA is a community-based non-profit organization. Over the years, VAALA has collaborated with diverse community partners to organize numerous cultural and artistic events. VAALA’s four core programs include the annual Viet Film Fest and Viet Book Fest, the Gallery Beyond Walls program featuring art exhibitions, and free art and film workshops for youth, such as Youth in Motion: A Filmmaking Workshop for Emerging Filmmakers.
