Trinh and Hien will speak about their Vietnamese American history, how the wars in the motherlands bleed into their lives in present day still, and how it has thrust them into fighting the good fight for a true justice, with art as gentle advocate.
Hiền and Trinh have been married for 25 years and share in their community work, while seeking ways to help alleviate the suffering in humanity, in justice and in love. Their shared conversations—discovered through personal experience and inherited histories—and life lessons have inflamed great inspiration to the artwork that they together create.
Light snacks provided with RSVP -- link to RSVP here!
Please direct questions to Thaomi Michelle Dinh at tmdinh [at] stanford.edu (tmdinh[at]stanford[dot]edu).
Event co-sponsored by Asian Diasporic Art & Aesthetics, Asian American Studies and the Asian American Activities Center.
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Hiền Thach was born in Bạc Liêu, Việt Nam. In 1978, after the Fall of Sài Gòn, he and his family escaped on foot from Việt Nam and through Cambodia, before finding shelter at a refugee camp in Thailand. Growing up in the Central Valley, with the great support of his family and community, Hiền discovered his athletic talent, which granted him an athletic scholarship to San José State, where he majored in international business while playing football. He has found his fulfillment in serving our communities through various faculties. Currently, he works with high school athletes, preparing them for higher education, with the hopes of athletic scholarship offers. He also works closely with families whose loved ones have been incarcerated, some of whom are now facing the deportation process.
Trinh Mai is a California-based visual artist who works with a breath of natural, traditional, and inherited media that hold histories of their own. Her current work confronts the fear, injustice, and devastation that has harrowed our refugee and immigrant families, then and now, and seeks hope within humanity’s consistent struggle in war and hardship. She received her BFA at San Jose Staté, where she met her husband, Hiền, and since then, she has worked with numerous humanitarian organizations, including the Friends of Huế Foundation Children's Shelter in Việt Nam and Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia, also partnering with the International Rescue Committee to develop creative projects with refugee children. In 2019, the Asian American Law Journal at Berkeley Law included artwork in their pages for the first time since its inception in 1993, publishing her art to further expound on the immigration policies that threaten the well-being of Asian American communities to pronounce the hope, the call, and the consistent prayer for freedom. Her work is driven by the desire to document history, examine how it shapes us in present day, with the hope to help usher us into communal healing and an enduring hope that might help ground us in a fractured world.