Survival of the Fittest

During the summer, I was fortunate enough to be offered an internship at a recently established art gallery in Los Angeles. While I was there, I was in a way exposed to a different side of expression. As a theater student, I often forget that there are actually other forms of expression out there, and so this was a great learning experience. The most important aspect of my position there as an intern was to essentially prepare for the artist exhibitions every month. Towards the end of my internship, right around the middle of August, we began prepping for the next artist.

Yesterday I actually attended the artist's reception at the gallery to lend the owner some help. As I was sitting there, manning the desk while the event went on, a revelation came to me by the most unusual way. Laid out by me were the article clippings, statements, and basically biographical information of the artist that typically accompanied any show, when a couple suddenly came by to peruse over the material. Now I know you're not suppose to eavesdrop on other people's conversations, but they were practically standing right next to me. Anyways, though, I heard the man make a comment that seemed quite prosaic to me. As he read over Pipo's background and impetus for creating his work, the man conversationally asked the women with him, "Did you know that the artist was a refugee of the Vietnam War?". To me the question seemed particularly redundant because it seemed as though practically everyone I knew was a refugee. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how foreign it was for others to meet an actual refugee of a war. The entire scene just got me thinking about the rich history that was thus intertwined with the lives of my parents and family as many of them were displaced persons of the Vietnam War.

As I pondered over the myriad of stories my mother had told me as a child, it seemed impossible to connect the person she had become today to the scared, young girl in the far off country of Vietnam. Everything that she had told me about her life, the war, the hardship, and the long journey it took for her and her family to reach American began to take on a new light. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted to further investigate the possibility of turning my mother's life story into some sort of production. At this point I'm not really sure where this idea will take me, but I do know that I would really like to pursue it and possibly turn it into the inspiration for my independent project. Personally, this project would be a great honor for me to be able to pay homage to the culture and people that have raised me.