13. From a Hot Border
© 2022 Hồng-Ân Trương, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0296.13
In From a Hot Border (2001), the artist juxtaposes Time and Life magazine images and headlines featuring stories about the American invasion of Việt Nam during the 1960s and 1970s with photographs from the artist’s family album from the first few years of their lives as refugees in the US. By putting seemingly disparate elements in tension with each other, this series of photographs question the gaps and contradictions in US narratives about the American War in Việt Nam. In a simple gesture, these photographs create a kind of cognitive dissonance by calling attention to the narratives that have been sedimented through institutional racism in American popular culture and the media.