Phung Huynh: Angkorian Homecoming

March 20 - May 2, 2025
Institute for the Humanities Gallery, 202 S. Thayer
Gallery Hours: M-F 9am-5pm

Lasting for four years (1975 to 1979), and following the Cambodian Civil War, the Khmer Rouge Genocide was an eruption of mass violence at the hands of the Khmer Rouge fanatical political group then in power. It resulted in the systematic killing of between 1.5 and 3 million people, a quarter of the Cambodian population.

Class schism between urban and rural communities tilled the soil with resentment. Ethnic minorities, clergy, and intellectuals were targeted and persecuted. Nearly all visual artists, writers, musicians, and dancers perished or fled.

It is a profound history of inhumanity and atrocities best remembered in the U.S. because of the 1984 award-winning Hollywood movie The Killing Fields.

Contemporary L.A artist Phung Huynh’s multi-layered project Angkorian Homecoming marks 50 years since the start of the Khmer Rouge Genocide. It articulates the complexity of the Cambodian American experience and the evolution of Khmerican identity from past to present, tradition to assimilation, memorial to joy.

Huynh’s vision for the project includes the residencies and performance activations of Khmer dance master Mea Lath and company, as well as those of queer Khmer DJ Hunny Hach. For Huynh, the performances bring the exhibition full circle.

        Being an immigrant is not only about survival, it’s about thriving and actually living. Art speaks to that. —Phung Huynh

Born in Vietnam in 1978, of both Chinese and Cambodian descent, Huynh moved with her family to a Thai refugee camp before resettling in Michigan and then Los Angeles as a young child. Through the expanse of her work, which includes drawing, public murals, and community engagement, she celebrates the intricacies and variations of Southeast Asian identity.

        I really wanted to make art about our people and to be able to have our stories told by us. —Phung Huynh

In the IH Gallery, graphite portraits of family members on pink donut boxes are reminiscent of their ID photos while in Thai refugee camps. The pink boxes are an homage to Southern California donut shops, 90 percent of which are owned by the families of Cambodian refugees. Beyond the allure of their pink pop sensibility, each portrait is embedded with the detailed and nuanced cultural histories of the past. 

Recent drawings allude to the sacred Khmer Buddha heads looted from Cambodia and still housed in prominent American museums. Banners reveal headless statues left behind in Cambodian temples. Through this myriad of visual material and references, Huynh suggests a re-assemblance of things, reunion, restitution, and hope renewed for future generations.

Huynh’s drawings are an endless unfolding, de-construction, and affirmation, each an acknowledgement of the power of stories to resist, and the justice inherent in re-telling them.

During this time of changing immigration policy under the current U.S. administration, Huynh's personal and cultural histories honored throughout her work remind us of those who have crossed borders into the United States and their unique and invaluable contributions to the American story. The Khmerican experience is as authentic a part of the all-American story as baseball, apple pie, or donuts.           

        Being American doesn’t have to be anglicized. It’s bigger than that. —Phung Huynh

—Amanda Krugliak, IH Arts Curator