Consenting The Child Refugee
Series exploring Identity, Belonging, and Consent Through My Childhood as a Refugee.
This series of watercolors examines my multifaceted identity by drawing on my childhood experiences as a refugee.
Guided by questions of identity and true belonging, I seek consent from my eight-year-old displaced child refugee self to share her story. She exists outside of traditional societal structures and codified identity systems that dictate inclusion and exclusion; her perspective affirms the universal human right to exercise agency in composing one's identity.
Inspired by my UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) ID photo, I distilled the uncertainties of displacement into essential motifs using a limited palette of ultramarine blue and pyrrol scarlet red. The paintings evoke the trauma of loss and the resilience of creating new meaning. This work advocates for the restorative power of honoring one's origins while simultaneously defining new visions of home.
By embracing the multitudes within myself, I aim to find a genuine connection to myself and others. My story contends that only when we truly belong to ourselves can we see and love others for who they are.
B.M 40373
Watercolor on handmade bark paper
width: 16 inches x height: 20 inches
Combining multiple layers of handmade paper from Southeast Asia, B.M 40373 portrays my identity card as an eight-year-old refugee child. Each layer alludes to the new environment and systems that shape my identity and story.
When my family fled our native country, we arrived at a refugee camp without official documentation. We lost everything, including our citizenship, becoming displaced persons.
The UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, designated me as B.M 40373, handwritten on a small chalkboard. This temporary identity was part of the tracking system required to process me in transition. By the time I arrived at my final destination in the U.S., I had accumulated at least three other identity numbers – each from a different processing center.
This eight-year-old girl held many names: one given by a shaman, a legal name, and ID number B.M. 40373. Each name marked a dislocation. Painting is an act of permission-seeking, a conversation between past and present selves about what it means to speak, to remember, and to belong. Home, I've learned, isn't a place left behind but something we become.
Moon Rise
Watercolor on arches paper
width: 16 inches x height: 20 inches
Losing one’s home can create identity dissonance—a disrupted sense of belonging stemming from the trauma of physical and emotional displacement. I coped by minimizing my refugee narrative to better assimilate into my next life. I retained my given name despite its linguistic complexity for non-Vietnamese speakers.
As I reflect on the many parts integral to my identity, I cherish all the names given to me by family and community, along with those I chose for myself.
The act of naming is an act of meaning-making. When everything can be taken away, left behind, or lost, the resilience of meaning prevails, like the moon rising every evening, mirroring the significance of my name: Moon Rise. This enduring symbol grounds me in my sense of belonging.
The Geography of Self
Watercolor on Arches paper
width: 16 inches x height: 20 inches
My body is an archive. Blue lines trace routes between the home I left and homes I've made, charting the geography I carry. What I couldn't leave behind travels within, rooted in flesh and memory.
Identity exists not in a fixed location but here, in this body that remembers every border crossed. Displacement reshapes my internal landscape, but something vital persists - I became the country I carry forward. Roots that learned to grow without ground.
Belonging The Displaced
Watercolor on arches paper
width: 16 inches x height: 20 inches
Working with ultramarine blue and pyrrol scarlet red, I reconnect with that eight-year-old refugee girl based on my UNHCR ID photograph. The blues expand like ocean, like distance, like the vastness of letting go. They hold both loss and horizon. The reds pulse through in fragments - marking what persists: wound and warmth, the pain of displacement, and the resilience required to create meaning in unfamiliar ground.