reconstructing an exodus history: boat trajectories from Vietnam and flight routes from refugee camps and of ODP cases

Tiffany Chung, reconstructing an exodus history: boat trajectories from Vietnam and flight routes from refugee camps and of ODP cases, 2020, embroidery on fabric, overall: 55 in. × 137 ³⁄₄ in. (139.7 × 349.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and through the American Women’s History Initiative, 2021.37

Artwork Details

Title: reconstructing an exodus history: boat trajectories from Vietnam and flight routes from refugee camps and of ODP cases
Artist: Tiffany Chung
Date: 2020
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: overall: 55 in. × 137 ³⁄₄ in. (139.7 × 349.9 cm)
Credit Line: Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment and through the American Women’s History Initiative
Mediums: fabric
Mediums Description: embroidery on fabric
Classifications: Decorative Arts
Fiber
Subjects: Object — written matter — map
Object Number: 2021.37
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2021.37

Artwork Description

Delicate trails of scarlet thread embroidered across oceans of fabric represent the real-life journeys of refugees who fled Vietnam in the late twentieth century. Tiffany Chung compiled these routes to capture a perspective that had never been told: those of people like her family, who were forced to escape after the war ravaged their home country.

For Chung, the map is a way to frame her own experience. Having lived through the war and a subsequent move to the United States, she is fascinated by how political events change the world in ways big and small, shaping large-scale geographies as much as individual lives.