“Towards the Same Horizon” consists of 21 archival images from post-war Vietnam printed on Pictorico film and hand-constructed together in a timeline format. All photos follow the same horizon line and/or analogous points of connection. Movement plays a significant role in this piece – both in concept and experience. 

From left to right, the timeline begins with images from the Fall of Saigon and ends with documentation of Vietnamese refugees’ camp life (among which I included a personal family photograph). I juxtaposed the archival images according to how they push/pull into each other (e.g. bodies of people moving toward and overlapping into the next image). Installed mid-air and suspended from the ceiling, “Towards the Same Horizon” ultimately exists as a sculptural object that transforms the space around it depending on viewers’ movements/distance.

I encouraged my audience to interact with the piece using their phone flashlights, causing images to expand and shrink on the wall behind. When flashlights met the back of the artwork, they formed ripples of light (similar to water). Throughout the ideation/sculptural process, I’ve been ruminating on the concept of pointillism beyond its basis as a painting technique. How can fragments come together to complete an image? How can the stories that are generationally passed down unite to form a guileless history – one that dives beyond the skewed perspectives in history books and school curriculums? Past every image I incorporated into this piece, an entire world existed out of frame…not forgotten, but simply unseen. With regard to this, I believe it is crucial to memorialize the obscured narratives of Vietnamese refugees and deviate from how the war is remembered in the U.S. (especially through a lens filtered by American exceptionalism). 

Contrary to the title and visual flow of this piece, Vietnamese refugees immigrated toward different horizons (and in many directions) depending on their given circumstances. But, the idealogy of “moving towards the same horizon” is moreso rooted in a shared rhetoric amongst many refugees: that a better future existed on that horizon regardless of direction, separated by land/water from the pain and poverty in post-war Vietnam.

To me, this artwork is still a draft for something much bigger down the line. Although escaping Vietnam by boat was not the only way refugees left the country, it was the main path my family took – thus, my choice to center my archival usage in this piece around Vietnamese boat people. In the future, there is a lot I’d like to rework regarding this piece’s content, length, and presentation, but for now… thank you for your time.