Memory Study • Sarah Luu

“The diasporic is an act of will and memory.” -Bell Hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995)

Memory Study (2025-) is a series of ceramic works that try to make sense of family history learned in fragments. Sourced from my personal family archive, the portraits displayed are examples of how photographs can work together with evoked memories to form a collective narrative. Like many second generation Vietnamese Americans, I have limited resources to learn about my ancestry. In my family, memory plays an important role in preserving not only our culture and traditions, but also the generational stories of our bloodline and the practices that have sustained us through thick and thin. I lean on the matriarchs to inform my research, collecting as many stories from my mother and grandmother as I can. In doing so, I may be able to use my art practice to imagine a future for the Vietnamese diaspora that is unique to second generation Vietnamese Americans (and onward), severed from the intergenerational cycles of inherited traumas and sacrificial burdens of responsibility tied to the results of the American War.