August 28 – October 25, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 29, 2026, 11am – 2pm, RSVP: https://bit.ly/MakeitHomeReception
Huntington Beach Art Center
538 Main St, Huntington Beach, CA 92648
Galley Hours: Tuesday: 12pm-8pm; Wednesday-Thursday: 12pm-6pm; Friday-Sunday: 12pm-5pm
Huntington Beach – The Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) proudly presents Make it Home, a fine arts exhibition curated by Brenda Huỳnh and An Lê. On view from August 28 – October 25, 2026 at the Huntington Beach Art Center, the exhibition brings together 3 multi-generational Vietnamese diaspora artists to understand the way that home is defined, then understood. Admissions to all events are free and open to the public.
Make it Home marks VAALA’s first partnership with the Huntington Beach Art Center and brings together acclaimed artists Ann Lê, Hùng Việt Nguyễn, and Thịnh Nguyễn. The exhibition will also feature an in-person art workshop on September 5, 2026, offering audiences an opportunity to engage with the artists and explore the themes of home through creative practice.
“I want the exhibition to invite people to think about the spaces they inhabit and how those spaces are shaped by their circumstances.” says co-curator Brenda Huỳnh. “Home, often understood as a physical place, can also be found in the culture and history that shape us. These artists offer their own interpretations of what home means, drawing on the histories, traditions, and experiences that connect us to it.”
About the Artists
Ann Lê
Ann Lê (she/her) is a Los Angeles based artist and Senior Lecturer of Photography and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University. She’s exhibited works at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Wende Museum, USC Pacific Asia Museum, and USC Roski School of Art and design. Her works explore identity, family history, the diaspora, and the space in between becoming Vietnamese-American.
Hùng Việt Nguyễn
Artist Hùng Việt Nguyễn was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1957. He studied Biology at Science University, then transitioned to working as an illustrator, graphic artist, and designer after settling in the U.S. in 1982. He developed his artistry skills independently, studying many traditional Eastern and Western forms, media, and techniques. Nguyễn’s compelling, labor-intensive investigations of oil paint reveal a methodical mastery of textures. While portions of Nguyen’s work suggest the influence of many traditional art forms, including woodblock prints, East Asian scroll paintings, ceramic art, mosaic, and stained glass, his ultimate expression asserts a contemporary pedigree.
Thịnh Nguyễn
Thịnh Nguyễn was born on November 27, 1989 in the countryside of Tây Ninh, Vietnam. Growing up, he still has memories of observing the open skies, drawing the birds that flew by, and imagined what it would be like to fly. In 1995, he immigrated with his family to Southern California.
The undercurrents driving his work stem from sustainability, craftsmanship, and community. His emphasis on the process, when done with care and consideration, continues to be an inextricable element in creating art that permeates beyond canvas and color. These principles brought him over to work as an in-house Artisan at Moynat, located in South Coast Plaza—providing hand-painted personalizations for the Parisian Maison.
Nguyễn graduated with a BFA in Illustration and a minor in Philosophy at California State University Fullerton, and later pursued a Certificate for Textile/Surface Pattern at Otis College of Art and Design. His work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles, Society of Illustrators New York, and Creative Quarterly.
About the Curators:
Brenda Huỳnh is a graphic designer based in the Bay Area and Orange County. She holds a B.A. in Asian American Studies, a B.A. in Film and Media Studies, and an M.A. in Asian American Studies from the University of California, Irvine. Through her creative and scholarly work, Brenda explores the everyday life practices of refugee women and documents these practices as sites of memory, storytelling, and historical preservation within the diaspora. Grounded in Critical Refugee Studies, she seeks to understand how trauma, heavily stemming from Western imperialism and colonialism, continues to affect the lives of Southeast Asian women. Her research engages concepts of memory keeping, silence, fragmented storytelling, and gendered spaces, examining how these everyday acts carry the past into the present and sustain forms of gendered knowledge production.
An Lê is a documentarian interested in the social life of technologies and how digital worlds impact how we pay attention and make meaning: what does it mean to know ourselves through the traces of self we leave behind online? Her curatorial practice builds on these questions, engaging mediated memory and vernacular archives as sites through which inherited histories are preserved and alternative futures are imagined. Her documentary photography attends to queerness and worldmaking in everyday Vietnamese diasporic life, where images are not static objects but active participants in culture, formed over time through curation and archiving by people and institutions. She holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and calls Little Saigon home.
About Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA): 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, Viet Book Fest, multi-art exhibitions, and Gallery Beyond Walls, featuring free art workshops for youth and community members.
About Huntington Beach Art Center: Opened to the public in 1995, the Art Center is the creative heart of downtown HB. A community arts and culture center, the Art Center provides space for creative expression, offering low cost, high-quality art, music, and movement classes in its studios and dynamic exhibitions and event programming in its galleries
Ann Lê
Mother / Grandfather, 2011
collage
20 x 20 in
Hùng Việt Nguyễn
LOOKING THROUGH THE GATE, 2024
Oil on canvas
30 x 40 in
Thịnh Nguyễn
Travel Sketchbook, 2022
Gouache on moleskin
9 ¾ x 9 ¾ in