Skip to main content
Vilcek Foundation
  • About
    • About

      The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences.

    • Our Mission
    • Our Founders
    • Our Team
    • Press Center
    • Contact
  • Prizes
    • Prizes

      The Vilcek Foundation Prizes celebrate extraordinary achievements in the arts and sciences.

    • About the Prizes
    • Prize Recipients
    • Vilcek Prizes

      Awards immigrants with a legacy of major accomplishments.

    • Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise

      Recognizes young immigrant professionals for outstanding achievements.

    • Vilcek Prize for Excellence

      Celebrating intellectual and cultural leaders in the United States.

    • Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History

      Honors art historians, curators, and fine arts professionals.

  • Art
  • Grants
    • Grants

      Grants awarded to 501(c)(3) cultural, educational, and philanthropic organizations in the United States.

    • Grants

      Learn more and apply for a grant.

    • Grants History

      Explore a list of past Vilcek Foundation grantees.

  • Events
  • News
Sign Up Search
Home > News > Brian Doan: hôme hôme hôme

Brian Doan: hôme hôme hôme

Press Release | June 24, 2013
1021220.pdf
Share this page
Share this page on X Share this page on Facebook Share this page on LinkedIn

A Vietnamese-American Artist Uses Mixed Media to Evoke Real and Imagined Homelands

Brian Doan premieres new installation at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery 

New York, June 24, 2013—An exhibition of new works by Vietnamese-born photographer and mixed-media artist Brian Doan will open this fall at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery. Entitled hôme hôme hôme, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York City will explore his lifelong struggle with national and individual identity and reflect upon his experiences both as a child in war-scarred Vietnam and later as a young Vietnamese immigrant to the United States.

Growing up in postwar Vietnam, where his father spent ten years incarcerated in a government-run reeducation camp, Mr. Doan turned away from political propaganda and ideology at an early age and instead cultivated a private inner world. Like many in that economically and physically devastated country, his family chose to immigrate to the United States to make a better life for themselves in California. Settling in Los Angeles, the artist and his family worked hard to assimilate into mainstream American culture. Today, however, Mr. Doan self-identifies not only as an American but also as a member of the worldwide Vietnamese diaspora.

In the new body of work on display at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery, Mr. Doan pieces together images culled from his fragmented past, creating art that is political as well as personal. Utilizing video installation, glass sculpture, satirical self-portraits, and mixed-media assemblage (one piece features photography printed on a found-object car door), Mr. Doan grapples not only with memories of a lost childhood but also with the ongoing question of identity and cultural belonging as a member of two very different cultures. The work, which is by turns both poignant and humorous, evokes his ongoing desire to find (or create) a lasting “home” for himself, despite a lifelong experience of displacement, estrangement, and exile.

Executive director Rick Kinsel said of this exhibition, “Brian Doan created a radically different life for himself when he immigrated to the United States, and his work as an artist reflects both the challenge and the disorientation that he experienced as a result of that move. Through his work, we get a sense of the enormity of his life journey from Vietnam to the U.S.A. But the work has a universal appeal, because all of us are, to some greater or lesser extent, permanently separated from our past and traumatized by our separation from family and home. Understanding where we come from, recognizing that we can never go back there, and finding some way, instead, to create a new sense of home and belonging is an experience everyone can relate to. As a result, Mr. Doan’s exhibition at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery speaks not just to the experience of Vietnamese-American immigrants but to all of us, immigrant or not, who have had to reconcile ourselves too.”


Brian Doan has exhibited at a number of leading museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the International Center of Photography in New York, and the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. His work has also been exhibited at the Milan Triennale. He is the recipient of many grants and awards, including an award from the California Council for the Humanities, a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship in the Humanities. Born in Quang Ngai, Vietnam, in 1968, he attended high school and college in Vietnam, received his BFA from the University of Colorado in Denver in 2004 and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in 2007.

Mr. Doan currently teaches in the department of visual arts and media at Long Beach City College, in Long Beach, California. He is married and a father of a 10-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son.

Share this page
Share this page on X Share this page on Facebook Share this page on LinkedIn

Join our mailing list

Sign Up
Vilcek Foundation
21 East 70th Street
New York, New York 10021

Phone: 212.472.2500

Email: info@vilcek.org

  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Our Founders
    • Our Team
    • Press Center
    • Contact
  • Prizes
    • Prize Recipients
    • Vilcek Prizes
    • Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise
    • Vilcek Prize for Excellence
    • Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History
  • Art
  • Grants
    • Grants History
  • Events
  • News
  • Careers
Connect with us
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Facebook
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Instagram
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on X
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on LinkedIn
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Youtube
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Vimeo
  • Privacy Policy
  • Accessibility Statement
© 2025   Vilcek Foundation