Artist's Lecture- Quynh Tran

Tatiana Smith

The lecture I attended was by Quynh Tran for her final in Graduate studies. Quynh has had a very interesting life so far and it has played a significant role in her artwork. She is originally from Hanoi, Vietnam, where she grew up, and then she made her journey across the world to America, where her self discovery blossomed. She has a BFA in printmaking and BA in advertising and has had multiple graduate projects at UNR, including, “Infinite Parade,” “Recurring Dreams,” and this exhibition, “Not here, Nor there.”

Quynh’s main focus throughout her scholastic career has been in Luminality, which is a series of stages that describe her journey of self-discovery. The first stage was the preliminary stage, which was starting with something that has come to an end, her leaving Vietnam. It was the separation from her homeland and giving up her identity as a Vietnamese into a new life. The next stage is the liminal stage, where it was an entrance into a threshold phase for her, where everyday notions of identity, time and space were suspended. She questioned her self-identity: American vs. Vietnamese, agonized between these two. The final stage was the post-liminal stage, where her new social status was confirmed and she accepted her new dual-identity. This led to her capturing this in-between space in her work.

This artist is stuck in the in-between for her work where she understands to be inside a place is to belong to it and to identify with it, whereas to be outside is a sense of strangeness and alienation from people and places. This was inspired by artists Edward Relph and Yi-fu tuan. Her newest inspiration that led her to this final project has been installation art, which is a type of art that the viewer physically enters the space. There is different experiences with this genre of art, like creating a dream scene and giving the viewer a heightened perception towards the meaning of the work.