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New mural on a food pantry wall in Neponset aims to feed the mind
What was once an empty brick wall on the corner of Neponset Avenue and Minot Street has been transformed into a mural created by the Dorchester artist Tran Vu that speaks to “feelings of food.”
Last Thursday (June 8), a crowd gathered in a tent under the rain at the Harbor Health Food Pantry to celebrate Vu, a native of Vietnam who grew up in Dorchester, and her creation.
2024
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Art New England
Artist Ngoc-Tran Vu got nominated to be one of the 10 Exceptional Emerging Voices in New England.
2023
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Dec. 16 meeting to launch ‘Healing Memorial’ effort for Vietnamese community
A grassroots group that plans to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the War in Vietnam in 2025 will convene its first public meeting about their ideas on Saturday, Dec. 16 at the VietAID Community Center on Charles Street. The meeting, which will take place at noon, will include a discussion about an proposed art installation located in Fields Corner.
Dorchester-based artist Trân Vũ is one of the people leading the effort, which is called “1975: Vietnamese Diaspora Healing Memorial.”
Trân grew up in Dorchester and has worked to create art that represents the diversity of the neighborhood through murals and projects that explore identity, justice, and belonging.
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Meet Ngoc-Tran Vu
We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ngoc-Tran Vu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ngoc-Tran below.
Ngoc-Tran, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
A significant and meaningful project is one I am working on at the moment actually titled “1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Healing Project.”
2025 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the emergence of a significant Vietnamese Diaspora.My project will reclaim and amplify narratives on the impact of war and pay trauma-informed homage to the families and communities flung far from their homeland. 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Healing Project pays homage to the families and communities impacted by the war in Vietnam and will result in a permanent memorial in Boston’s Little Saigon district as a site of recognition and celebration of the Vietnamese and greater Southeast Asian diaspora, remembrance, and healing of their long journeys away from the homeland…
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New mural on a food pantry wall in Neponset aims to feed the mind
What was once an empty brick wall on the corner of Neponset Avenue and Minot Street has been transformed into a mural created by the Dorchester artist Tran Vu that speaks to “feelings of food.”
Last Thursday (June 8), a crowd gathered in a tent under the rain at the Harbor Health Food Pantry to celebrate Vu, a native of Vietnam who grew up in Dorchester, and her creation.
Said Ami Bowen, the vice president of marketing and community engagement at Harbor Health: “Art is universal. It was really important for us to work with a local artist and have something that was really representative about what people’s feelings of food are and feelings about being a part of the community and asking for help with food.”
Vu’s specialty is creating art that organizes and facilitates activism through themes of identity, justice, and belonging.
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‘Artists in Conversation’ panel addresses isolation felt by immigrants
Artists Mimi Bai, Gohar Dashti and Ngoc-Tran Vu all share a common experience — they immigrated to the U.S. at a young age and started a journey that proved to be harder than they expected.
“Those of us who came to this country as children are neither of our original culture or of the new culture. So we don’t fit,” said Vu, a local artist who emphasizes community, family and culture in her artwork.
Vu, alongside Bai, the artist behind the “HIDE and SEE” short film and exhibit at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, and Dashti, a photographer specializing in nature, spoke to a crowd at the Pao Arts Center Jan. 28 about how their artwork captures ideas of community, migration and home, and just how difficult it is to navigate a life split between two cultures.
“I think oftentimes, as people of color, we are marginalized,” Vu said. “Our connections with our culture are severed and that is when intergenerational trauma happens.”
2022
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Ngọc-Trân Vũ: Cultivating community through creative collaboration
By Amanda Winters
Ngọc-Trân Vũ has always used art as a medium to share stories about her identity as a Vietnamese immigrant living in America. When she accepted the opportunity to create a mural themed around Vietnamese culture and stories on the side of a Vietnamese-owned building housing Phở Hòa, a Fields Corner staple, she got the entire community involved.
“I was just in my neighborhood sitting at the cafe by Phở Hòa,” says Vũ. “I was talking to the owner, Tam, a fellow artist. I was like, ‘I’d love to do some kind of creative projects,’ and he was like, well, ‘please consider my building as like your canvas.’ ”
From there, Vũ secured a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts and hired members of all ages within the community to form a steering committee to help her hear authentic stories and weave these narratives seamlessly into her art…
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On Belonging: In Conversation with Ngoc-Tran Vu
This past July, artist and 2021 Collective Futures Fund grantee Ngoc-Tran Vu celebrated thirty years in the United States with her family. Just weeks later, she was in Vietnam again, on a group pilgrimage through the country’s sites of loss and suffering, tracing the timeline of the Vietnam War. For Vu, each visit to Vietnam is different, because each time she is different. “Certain information is only available to me depending on the growth in my life,” she shares.
During the pilgrimage, Vu and other Vietnamese travelers, some of the US and some based in Vietnam, visited ten sites to share the collective prayer and healing. With so many narratives lost or erased by war and colonialism, those on this journey were attempting to reconcile with each site’s violent history…
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Dorchester Reckons With Deportation, Displacement at #WhoBelongsHereWhoDoesnt Exhibition
October 4, 2022
On Saturday, September 24, at Town Field Park in Dorchester, visual artists, performers, organizers, and community members gathered to commemorate the new #WhoBelongsHereWhoDoesnt art initiative. The free, outdoor, multimedia exhibition aims to amplify Southeast Asian refugee voices that are too often left out of mainstream discourse surrounding U.S. immigration policy.
The exhibit is a visual art piece that pairs visuals of the Mekong River with firsthand accounts of people’s experiences as refugees of the war across Southeast Asia.
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Free outdoor exhibition to showcase Southeast Asian stories of home, displacement
September 22, 2022
The exhibition features artist Ngoc-Tran Vu who is collaborating with Boston City Hall, Asian American Resource Workshop, Olmsted Now Parks Equity, and Sam Lê Shave, among others.
The exhibition is named “Who Belongs Here? Who Doesn’t?” and is expected to feature visual and performing artists sharing stories after months of interviews.
“Since the 1990s, the U.S has issued over 15,000 orders of removal to Southeast Asian refugees,” organizers said in a release, noting that Southeast Asian Americans are the largest refugee community in US history, and Dorchester became home to many after 1975.
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For Olmsted's 200th birthday, a renewed effort to make Boston's parks welcoming to all
September 2, 2022
It's about, you know, equity — I mean thinking about this sense of belonging,” said lead artist Ngoc-Tran Vu. “It’s about who belongs here, and who's not welcome.”
And it’s about changing those assumptions, she said. That may happen slowly, so the Olmsted Now Committee of Neighborhoods hopes the grant program will continue. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy is raising funds toward that end in the hopes that, one day, Boston’s parks will come closer to being the equitable places for everyone that Frederick Olmsted hoped they would be.
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NGOC-TRAN VU ON BRINGING SOCIAL ISSUES INTO THE OPEN
August 30, 2022
On September 24, Ngoc-Tran Vu will present a public interactive arts exhibition in collaboration with Sam Lê Shave, the Asian American Resource Workshop and others at Town Field in Dorchester to amplify Southeast Asian stories of home, deportation and displacement. Olmsted Now talked more with Ngoc-Tran Vu about the event, which is supported by the Olmsted Now Parks Equity & Spatial Justice Grant. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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“Be The Change” Exhibit Brings “Artivism” to the Fenway
August 16, 2022
Beginning Aug. 16, Fenway will be home to a Jewish Arts Collaborative exhibition of large-scale social justice sculptures from six Boston artists.
A spectacular example of “artivism”—a portmanteau of “art” and “activism”—will manifest from Aug. 16 through Oct. 26 in the Fenway neighborhood in a public art exhibition called “Be The Change.” Six Boston artists interpret the word tzedek, Hebrew for “justice,” and pay tribute to the humble yet iconic tzedakah box in their large-scale works of art. The exhibition is the brainchild of Laura Mandel, executive director of the Jewish Arts Collaborative (JArts), Caron Tabb, a Boston-based Israeli American artist, and Ruth Messinger, former president and CEO of American Jewish World Service, who is often described as a “social justice warrior.”
2019 - 2020
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Artists take over Roxbury billboard; Project aims to highlight local talent, bring joy to neighborhood
February 18, 2020
“Ngoc-Tran Vu, a Vietnamese-American artist who utilizes painting, photography, sculpture and social organizing in her practice, and Carlos W. Byron, an illustrator, painter and calligrapher currently working in photography, are confirmed for May and June, respectively.”
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Vietnamese artists take spotlight in virtual sharing of experiences
December 3, 2020
“This month, Vu and a handful of local artists are reimagining the event in a virtual livestream format that will take place Sat., Dec. 12, from noon to 2 p.m. and continue as a monthly series thereafter, providing a platform for community members to explore and unpack themes of diaspora, resiliency, memories, mental health, and healing practices in Vietnamese families.”
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With utility boxes as canvases, 3 Dot muralists hail ethnic food
October 8, 2020
Ngoc-Tran Vu of Fields Corner, Howie Green of Uphams Corner, and Robyn Thompson-Duong of Savin Hill were among the 12 artists selected out of a pool of more than 50 applicants to participate in the installation by sharing their own experience of Boston food culture.
Vu chose to paint an ode to pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup dish ubiquitous in and around Fields Corner. “I wanted to do it to highlight some of the more marginalized food within Boston’s culinary scene,” she explained.
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Downtown Boston Business Improvement District unveils ‘Tasteful Boston’
October 5, 2020
“Dorchester artist and community organizer Ngoc-Tran Vu brings an illustrative eye to a celebration of Vietnamese food culture, highlighting the ingredients that go into a warming bowl of pho soup.”
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‘Tasteful Boston’ paintings are like pick-me-ups for the food scene
October 2, 2020
“Vu calls her painting “A Closer Look at Pho,” a reference to the delicious Vietnamese noodle soup. “I wanted to highlight the healthy herbs in it and add some green to the space and [perform] kind of a deconstruction of this popular soup,” said Vu, a Dorchester resident who emigrated from Vietnam as a child.”
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Meet The ARTery 25 — Millennials Of Color Impacting Boston Arts And Culture
March 25, 2019
"After living in New York City and taking a trip to Vietnam in 2016, Trân came back to Boston hungry for a way to connect with her neighbors, specifically with the Vietnamese community and elders. In 2017, she spearheaded a mural in Fields Corner that celebrates the Vietnamese community. She gathered neighbors, knocking on their doors, creating an advisory board, and cultivating unity around the project. “For me, thinking about the process of the art-making, making sure that it was intergenerational, that it was bilingual, that it was reflective of the community has been the most important thing in my work.”
2015 - 2017
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Local Artist, Activist Leads Project Honoring Vietnamese Community
November 17, 2017
“The immigrant story is one of struggle, challenges, aspirations and dreams. Boston is full of these stories in every neighborhood, from Back Bay to Boston's biggest neighborhood -- Dorchester. Artist Ngoc-Tran Vu, who goes by Tran, captured the turbulence and beauty contained in the stories of the Vietnamese people of Dorchester in a special way: A mural created in collaboration with the community.”
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Community Activists Are Bringing a Huge Mural to Fields Corner in Dorchester
September 28, 2017
“I was seeing a lack of art in Dorchester,” Tran explains. She was very aware of the long history of the Vietnamese community in the area, and felt that those two areas of interest could be combined. “I started thinking about the changing in the landscape, and how do we hang on to the histories and stories and narrative, and that’s when I really saw this important need for art.”
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Vietnamese-American culture featured in Fields Corner mural
September 28, 2017
“Ngoc-Tran Vu is a Dorchester native, artist and community organizer heading the mural project. More public and inclusive art in Dorchester has always been something for which Vu strived, but a concrete plan arose when she met Tam Le, another artist and local entrepreneur.”
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Raising Vietnamese Narrative in Dorchester: Ngoc-Tran Vu
August 11, 2017
“Dorchester is already known throughout Massachusetts as the neighborhood in Boston with the largest diversity of residents, however not many realize that a significant percentage of that diversity is Vietnamese. In fact, Fields Corner in Dorchester has even been recognized as “the heart of the Vietnamese community in Boston.” As the immigrant population continues to grow in Dorchester, there are many residents, such as local Dorchester artist and youth organizer Tran Vu, who seek to unite the Vietnamese people with every other group in the community.”
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Mural celebrating Vietnamese heritage set for Fields Corner
April 19, 2017
“Ngoc-Tran Vu, a multimedia artist who is best known as “Tran,” has won a $10,000 grant to design and paint a permanent mural celebrating Vietnamese culture in Fields Corner. The artwork will adorn the side of the Pho Hoa restaurant across from Dot House Health and is scheduled to be completed by this fall.
“I feel honored, excited, proud,” Le told the Reporter. “Honored that Tran has decided to use our wall to create what we anticipate to be a beautiful homage to our heritage and community, excited to see the community come together to share the experience of the creation of the piece, proud of Tran and her dedication to the Vietnamese community. I could not think of a more fitting person nor a more fitting medium to achieve this than Tran’s mural,” he said.”
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Dorchester native spearheading Vietnamese oral history project
January 29, 2015
“Vu is collecting the experiences of immigrants like her own family in the first project of its kind to focus on one of the Boston area’s largest and most overlooked refugee groups. She is facilitating the recording of oral histories of both the Vietnamese diaspora in the U.S., and American veterans of the Vietnam War, to create an oral history of their journeys that will be stored at the Library of Congress.
Her work is part of public’s television’s American Experience, and was born out of “Last Days in Vietnam,” an Oscar-nominated documentary that chronicles the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War, and was directed by Rory Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy’s youngest daughter.”
2006
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Her search for justice has taken her around the world
June 4, 2006
“Ngoc-Tran Vu's thirst for knowledge about racism and injustice has taken her to Cuba, an American Indian reservation in Montana, and along the trail of the Freedom Riders in the South.”
After the conversation, artist Mimi Bai conducted an artist walkthrough of her solo exhibition, HIDE AND SEE at the BCA Mills Gallery.
Find out more about Mimi Bai: HIDE AND SEE here —https://bostonarts.org/event/artists-in-conversation-mimi-bai-with-gohar-dashti-ngoc-tran-vu/