Texas historically has resettled more refugees than any other state in the country and is currently home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of California. Can you tell us a little bit about your family’s refugee journeys and how they ended up in Houston, Texas?

I didn’t truly know my family’s refugee story until I did a photographic series on my grandmother. I spent the day with her and discussed our family’s journey to America. They sacrificed everything and risked it all for a better life. My family is from Quang Thuận, a small village north of Da Nang. In the beginning of 1975, the Viet Cong began moving down from North Vietnam and my family made the tough decision to leave their home. My grandparents headed to Da Nang with their four young children, Nga (my mother), Thu, Thanh and Thuy. My grandfather traded all of the family’s gold and jewelry for a spot on a fishing boat to go down to Vũng Tàu. They decided to go there because they heard from their church community that there would be U.S. Navy boats that would help them leave Vietnam. They made it to the beach, where they boarded a ship and the refugees were given an ultimatum: either throw all of their belongings overboard to make room for more refugees or stay in Vietnam. My family described this as being a very hard decision, to go to another country with nothing except the clothes on their backs. They later found out that some of our relatives were on the boat that decided to stay in Vietnam. They were on this ship for about a week before they were placed onto a bigger boat with more refugees. 

They were taken to an army camp in Guam for a couple of weeks, and then put on a plane to Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania. In the refugee camp, my family was placed with a sponsor in Schenectady, a retired doctor who helped them get back on their feet. Eventually they moved out on their own and lived in Schenectady until 1978. My family located some relatives in Houston, Texas, and they decided to move to Houston to be closer to them. They packed up their small apartment and found their first home in Houston (surprisingly, it’s not too far from my current home now). They would later move into an apartment in Humble, Texas, and eventually move into a house surrounded by three other homes of our relatives. Some of our immediate and extended family resettled throughout Texas, California, and Michigan.

How has your upbringing in (Houston) Texas shaped and grounded your identity as a Vietnamese American? Or conversely, has being Vietnamese American influenced your understanding of what it means to be American?

I grew up in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, where Chinatown was not too far away. My family and I would always go to eat in Chinatown after church. Being in the suburbs, most of my peers were predominantly white and at a very young age I knew that I was different from them. I remember in elementary school, my mother would pack me traditional Vietnamese food, like thịt kho, for school. During lunchtime the other kids would point out that my lunch was different. I really wanted to fit in, so I convinced my mother to buy me Lunchables so I could be like my peers. Looking back, I am thankful that my mom did what she could to help me feel like I belonged in America, even though I was a little brat who would trade delicious thịt kho for a child’s version of a charcuterie board. 

In my youth, I did everything I could to assimilate into American culture, like trying to play football. I feel like my upbringing has shaped my understanding of being American, specifically reinforcing being Vietnamese American. My first experience with the history of the Vietnam War was in middle school, but it was a short lesson that was only one day long. I am still trying to unpack the feelings of not being American while simultaneously not feeling Vietnamese enough. In my work, I address this blurred line between being Vietnamese and American by using historical images from the viewpoint of Americans and my family's archival images.

As an interdisciplinary artist currently pursuing a BFA at the University of Houston with a concentration in Photography and Digital Media, a lot of your work delves into the intersection of the Vietnamese diaspora, intergenerational trauma, and your personal experience of being a child of refugees, demonstrating the power of grounding your art in the personal and the political. What drew you to the arts in the first place, and in what ways has art been a conduit of expression and activism for you?

Art has always been an outlet for me to express myself, even at a young age. As I develop as an artist, I find it as a way to understand the world around me and to address the trauma within my life. It is a way of healing not only for myself, but also for my family; art becomes a way to address the trauma caused by war head on. To me, I believe that art is a political statement. As artists we create as a way to deliver a message about our society. Living in the South, it is important to highlight the Vietnamese diasporic experience since there is such a large population here. As an artist, I have this privilege to share my perception of the world, to create discourse on topics that I feel strongly about by visual storytelling. 

As an interdisciplinary artist, I first develop the concept and idea, then I will decide on what mediums would be best to explore for the work. My practice is interdisciplinary; spanning different mediums like photography, video, installations and performance, or a mix of multiple. 

Intergenerational can be a difficult topic to talk about, especially considering the often vast linguistic barriers that are prevalent in many Southeast Asian diasporic communities. Why is it an important topic to you, so much so that it is one of the defining themes in your artistic work?

I have always seen the signs of intergenerational trauma in my family before I even knew of the term. It wasn’t until I had a meeting with one of my professors that I learned what I’m feeling and seeing are signs of intergenerational trauma. In my work, I try to make it a collaborative process between me and my family. Due to the language barrier between my grandmother and I, art has become a way of communicating for us and to navigate difficult topics that are often not spoken about. My grandmother and I would look through photo albums filled with images of relatives that stayed in Vietnam. The faces are unknown to me, but for my grandmother, I know she has missed so much of their lives and misses them dearly. 

You are currently working on a project titled Mẹ Việt Nam ơi, Chúng Con Vẫn Còn đây (Oh Mother Vietnam, We Are Still Here). In the abstract, you write that you “will examine the history of the Vietnamese diaspora in relation to the Houston and Gulf Coast region where many refugees settled after the Vietnam War. The project will emphasize the resilience of this marginalized community through the artist’s journeys as he visits sites in Seabrook, Texas, old and new Chinatowns, Village apartments, and his family’s homes throughout Houston. With support from The Idea Fund and Houston Art Alliance, Harris’s research will culminate in a mixed-media sculptural installation.” Can you talk about the inception for this incredible project?

The project was created when I began to research the migration and resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in the Houston and Gulf Coast region. I have been using academic journals and books focusing on Vietnamese migration to do my research for this project. During my research, I came across a photograph from 1981 of the Ku Klux Klan burning a wooden boat with “Viet Cong” painted on the side of it in Seabrook, Texas. I was so shocked by the discovery. I wanted to confront this image by making work that focused on the resilience of Vietnamese refugees in Houston and the Gulf Coast. The current book that I am reading at the moment is “Migration By Boat: Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion, and Survival” edited by Lynda Mannik in association with the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. The book has a chapter that focuses on the Vietnamese refugees that has been very impactful in informing my project. It examines the Vietnamese Diaspora by exploring the ocean as a “refugee space” and further examines the concept of the boat.

Mẹ Việt Nam ơi, Chúng Con Vẫn Còn đây will explore the notions of home, labor, and erasure. With the help of fellow artist Erick Zambrano, together we will be constructing a wooden boat created from materials found from each of the locations, resembling the boats taken by my family and many other refugees to escape their war-torn country. I will be visiting personal sites of my own family’s journey and significant historical landmarks that explore the traces of movement throughout Houston and the Gulf Coast created by this displacement. I will be creating a site responsive performance where I will be filling the boat with the soil from each site as I pull it through these areas. Through the motifs of a wooden boat and my own family’s archived photographs, I can better understand the journey of my family and process the trauma that comes with war. The project will address contemporary issues surrounding migration and will add to the existing discourse on the current refugee crisis. I hope that I can highlight the Vietnamese diasporic community in the South, which is often left out of the conversation surrounding Vietnamese refugees in the United States. 

Website: https://brandontharris.com/
Instagram: @brandonthoharris