The Vietnam Exodus Project is an ongoing in-depth work by artist Tiffany Chung which uses interdisciplinary art and research methods to examine the damaging effects of the Vietnamese exodus and pursue changes in international asylum policy. The exodus saw the departure of approximately 1.6 million people from Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and for twenty years following. At its peak it constituted one of the most significant global movements of refugees in the second half of the 20th century. The project follows Chung’s The Syria Project (2011–15), exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale, and her survey of major international conflicts, which resulted in an exhibition entitled Scratching the Walls of Memory at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in 2010.

Chung’s The Vietnam Exodus Project combines analytical and academic research, ethnographic fieldwork and the creation of art objects—cartographic drawings, paintings, textiles, films and photographs—to provide detailed perspectives and statistical information on the exodus. Meticulous research underpins each component of the project. Among other tasks, Chung engages with communities through social media, reviews archival and published materials, collates data and statistics, visits former detention camp sites and holding centers, interviews former refugees, and reviews archival materials at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and other repositories. Elements are variously manifested in art exhibitions, as multipart installations, or, in the case of her advocacy work, through closed-door and public meetings that bring together actors and agents involved in refugee policy.

This project has a deep personal resonance for Chung. A Vietnamese refugee who fled with her family to the United States after 1975, she is acutely aware of the political sensitivities and ethics surrounding her art practice. She uses stories and past experiences not to explicitly reclaim memory, but to gain insight to inform policy change at the highest levels. While including analysis of the Vietnamese exodus across Southeast Asia and the globe, Chung’s project has over the past three years focused on the complex situations of former Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. Recent iterations of the project, such as an installation at the 2018 Biennale of Sydney and one at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, convey the contested status of Vietnamese refugees who were granted permanent residency by the Hong Kong government following the closure of its last refugee detention camp in 2000. The psychological trauma experienced by these former refugees is, in part as a result of Chung’s project, now being publicly recognized and discussed within art, law, and political communities.

 One of the most significant impacts of Chung’s The Vietnam Exodus Project has been visual—to record, recollect and illustrate difficult-to-source information about the Vietnamese exodus. Her cartographic drawing HKSAR statistics on yearly arrivals and departures of V-refugees from 1975–1987, (2016), for example, details the arrival, resettlement and repatriation of Vietnamese refugees within detention centers and refugee camps in Hong Kong from 1975 to 1997[1]. Details missing from Chung’s drawing—the camp names and their exact locations—reveal the dehumanizing effect of statistical depictions, which, to quote Homi Bhabha, often results in “spectacle,” the overwhelming statistical scale of an event eclipsing any other potential reading or engagement—especially emotional.

Chung’s critical engagement with research methodologies is paramount to The Vietnam Exodus Project. Her approach recognizes the rigor that social science research methodologies can bring to artistic research, and their capacity to be used in other spheres of the project, such as the political. Ethical considerations are also integral; while drawing upon empirical research, works from Chung’s project never fully show original data, and are instead “obfuscated” or married with poetic and abstracted forms. In these ways, the artwork components of Chung’s project propose innovative notions of both artistic and sociological research, critically reflecting on the seemingly utopian concept of the former, and the perceived “objective” status of the latter. In Chung’s project, the selectivity of statistics and its quantitative approach are contrasted with the abilities of poetry and visual art to “fill the gaps”—to convey the trauma of former Vietnamese refugees.

Chung rarely directly quotes or uses interviewees’ testimonies; a decision which reflects her respect for their privacy. She is also adamant about the distinction between the advocacy work she undertakes and the project’s artwork components; while feeding into one another, each occupies a different agenda that she believes is more clearly heard when communicated in the language of the field. It is important to note that Chung’s original motivation in pursuing the project was artistic; it is what led her towards advocacy work. “If art is politics” in Chung’s project, it is because art forms the basis from which an innovative politics can spring; it generates the multiple perspectives and research necessary to pursue the latter.

Chung’s project has to date reached a wide community—not only in the arts, but also in policy making and human rights law. In 2017 and 2018, Chung organized public forums following the three presentations of artworks from the project in Hong Kong in three consecutive years (2016–18). Through these events, she not only made contact with more former refugees compelled to share their stories, but also human rights lawyers, policy makers, NGO volunteers and even an ex-Correctional Services Department officer. Chung has also raised the awareness among young Vietnamese people of the Vietnamese exodus through her collaboration with emerging Vietnamese painters, many of whom were unaware of the exodus due to its erasure from official history. In this sense, Chung’s project is incredibly bold—it brings to the surface for Vietnamese people what will likely remain a censored subject in their native country. In pursuing the project, Chung also puts her own status at risk (she has stated it would be impossible for her to exhibit the project in Vietnam; at the time of writing [2] she is unsure whether she can herself return).

In today’s context, The Vietnam Exodus Project is pertinent, providing a historic, Asian parallel to the current Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. On many levels, the Syrian refugee crisis bears striking resemblances to the Vietnamese mass exodus: the civil war, the influx of refugees into the immediate region, the boat escapees, the makeshift camps, the prolonged detention, constantly shifting asylum policies, the host countries’ domestic resentments and the international community’s “compassion fatigue.” It is against such fatigue that Chung fights in The Vietnam Exodus Project, which, through means of art and collaboration, inspires renewed empathy and engagement with displaced populations. Every effort contributes, building on the work of activists such as the late human rights lawyer Pam Baker, who fought for the rights of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong after the law there changed in 1990 to turn away asylum seekers. Through her project, Tiffany Chung has brought the cases of former Vietnamese refugees to the attention of the wider Hong Kong community, and lawyers have agreed that the case of the stateless Vietnamese in the city should be reopened and challenged. Policy change takes time.