June 2 – July 2, 2023 | Arrowmont Gallery in Knoxville
Featured this month in the Arrowmont Gallery in Knoxville is Aware A Way, textile and mixed media work by Millian Giang Pham. Millian will be at the gallery on First Friday between 6:00pm and 7:00pm, so please come by and meet the artist!
Art Switching Code Switching
The frustration of being partially understood was most prevalent when I conveyed complex ideas in a mishmash of Vietnamese and English to my parents. Our half-baked conversations usually devolved into one-sided views reinforced by traditional gender roles and outdated notions of filial piety. My parents—like many immigrant parents—hoped their children would thrive in the American landscape, but without losing the familiar roles and values of their generation. I learned that convincing my parents to change their perspective would have required more than a mastery of multiple languages and social codes. A lack of time and cultural resources drove me to seek out visual arts not only as a language to fill the voids in my verbal expression but also as a solace for not being seen and understood.
Straddling multiple cultural codes is the norm that I experience every day. To be successful is to constantly code switch to the appropriate language for the situation, creating a hybrid experience that is not always fruitful. This code switching is how I approach art making. Each work experiments with the aesthetic codes and conceptual framework of multiple cultures, art mediums, and languages. I test out new ways to convey an idea through a pluralism of perspective in the code switching of an artwork.
In my body of work entitled Abstract Anxiety, small compositions switch from printed images to hand-drawn text. Larger compositions switch embroidered text with painted imagery to revaluate the framework of fine art and seemingly lowbrow craft. Images such as durian, jackfruit, rambutan, cashew, and other exotic fruits are placed behind drawn words that allude to class warfare and Otherness— issues that affected my ability to communicate with my parents and many people around me. I’m interested in highly abstracting these words to the point of near illegibility, hiding phrases and presenting them as ambiguous visual puzzles. Since the answer to each puzzle is provided in the title of each piece, the works aim to reorient the viewer toward issues beyond mere appreciation of surface elements. It is an opportunity to navigate toward deeper dimensions through the mode and code switching of visual and verbal perception.
In my object and spatial works, I also use this combination of multiple art mediums and approaches as a metaphor for the constant code switching of everyday living. My sculptural installations combine familiar materials from my childhood in Vietnam with adapted materials of my adopted America. In performances and site-specific installations, I treat the space as a body in a series of premeditated gestures that deal with forceful adaptation and regretful assimilation. To increase accessibility of these performances, the main mode of perception is through digital documentation, which is presented online via carefully crafted videos.
As we live in a more globalized society and modes of communication evolve to become more expansive, this act of code switching has permeated into more lives and becoming more visible. Like my conversations with my parents, visibility doesn’t always mean being seen and communication doesn’t always lead to fruitful understanding. My works are not simply to start a conversation or even solve a societal problem, but seeks to convey what cannot be understood in verbal discourse. In my practice, I work with a variety of materials, aesthetic concerns, and conceptual frameworks to test out and find a better way to convey these difficult ideas.
After trampling in the muddy rice fields of rural Vietnam and then misreading product labels in the United States, Millian Pham received her BFA in painting and printmaking from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and her MFA in sculpture from the University of Florida. Pham’s art practice stems from her traumatic childhood in Vietnam and the painful adaptation in her adopted America. Her works highlight the intangible effects of social, political, and family structures on the body. She works with the materials of sculpture, fiber, video, drawing, collage, and verbal language through larger installations and performances. Her visual research has been exhibited nationally and internationally in Canada, Pakistan, Korea, and across the United States. Pham was an artist-in-resident for the I-Park Artist Enclave, the Hambidge Art Center, the ACRE program, Santa Fe Art Institute Labor Residency, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is currently the Art Editor of Broadsided Press, Treasurer of Strata Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in various posts on professional organizations such as FATE and SECAC. This summer she will teach workshops at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She is currently the Studio Art Foundations Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art at Auburn University in Alabama.
Website: altimablossom.net
Instagram: @phammilliangiang
Arrowmont Gallery in Knoxville is located at 110 S. Gay Street and is open Fridays 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm; Saturdays and Sundays, noon – 5:00pm.
