With the impending release of Watermark, we at TTUP wanted to feature the artist whose work features on the cover.
From the Snare of the Fowler, 2019
Acrylic, charcoal, gouache, hand embroidery, and tears on paper, 28 x 42”
“This piece began telling the story of a Vietnamese greenfinch who is working tirelessly to untangle the refugee children from the snares that befall them… A prayer for the refugee families, that they may be led to firm terrain with eyes set on a longsuffering hope for the life ahead.”
“As my work shares insight into personal life experiences, it also communicates the messages that have found their rhythms in the human experience to remind us that there is nothing new under the sun.
As a second-generation Vietnamese American, art has become an invaluable tool that has granted me the opportunity to live the refugee, immigrant experiences vicariously through the ones who arrived before me, allowing me to interpret these stories through my own ears, eyes and hands. With deep respect, I bind these inherited stories into our witnessing of history’s alliteration, of persecution and injustice, of mass exodus and the tribulations that we continue to face upon arrival, and of the anticipated opportunities that indeed await us on new horizons as we set our gaze upon home and promise.”
-Trinh Mai