Threads of Offering: Thương Hoài Trần
Thursday, July 9, 6-6:45 PM | Free

Join the curatorial team in a walk-through of Thương Hoài Trần’s work, discussing labor, diaspora, and homage to familial lineage.

Thương Hoài Trần (she/they) is an interdisciplinary Vietnamese American artist whose immigrant experience informs their identity and creative practice. Their work often incorporates family photographs using processes of weaving and unweaving to help them connect to their heritage and reconcile the gaps and barriers experienced by those in diasporic communities, displacement, loss of language, and generational disconnect. Threads of Offering brings together two bodies of the artist’s work – Ông Bà and Made in Vietnam.

Hoài Trần began Ông Bà, Vietnamese for grandparents, in 2021 to honor and celebrate their family. The series started with depictions of their four grandparents – three of whom have passed away. The artist meticulously dyed every single strand of yarn, wove them into portraits, then pulled out threads, distorting the portraits to symbolize their complex relationships with their grandparents and the fuzzy, painful, fragmented histories and memories that go unspoken. Each weaving stands between 7 and 8 feet tall, towing over viewers in the Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium. Their monumental scale evokes the sense of standing in the presence of Hoài Trần’s ancestors.

Gallery admission is free every day of the week. Generous support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program; the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funding from the state legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Arts Partnership, with support from the Cities of Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo; the McKnight Foundation; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; Giving Hearts Day donors; Spring Gala sponsors; and hundreds of Plains Art Museum members like you.

Exhibition Tour: Threads of Offering

Join the curatorial team in a walk-through of Thương Hoài Trần’s work, discussing labor, diaspora, and homage to familial lineage.