ABOUT
Tram (Carin) Luong's work examines the interrelation between collective memories, historical trauma, and cultural representation. Her practice lies at the intersection of anthropology, visual arts, and public advocacy. Inspired by the work of critical theorists such as Homi Bhabha and Charles Peirce, Luong locates her work in the realm of the "third," a new space of expression and existence that questions and derails the known and expected. She combines rigorous research with artistic mediation to arrive at new ways of investigating the rhizomatic connections between the past and present, between the lived reality of modern life and the turns of history. As such, the central tenets of her work include a range of thematic interests - the legacies of colonialism, the critique of Orientalism, and the understanding of ethnic differences, especially via the image of "The Other."
Luong is trained under the tutelage of photographer Pablo Delano and urban anthropologist Erik Harms. Methodologically, her work responds to the genre-defying practices of the French New Wave and ethnographic filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov and Werner Herzog. Her first feature film "Elegy for the time being" is an experimental documentary that merges ethnographic engagement with artistic interpretation to highlight the lasting impacts of past conflict on generations of Vietnamese artists and scholars in the United States. The film received positive transnational critiques and has been screened by the American Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam to foster understanding in the post-war period. More broadly, Luong's multidisciplinary framework covers a wide array of media. In her work, archival materials often find new lives in the forms of still and moving images, as well as other mixed-media representations.
Luong is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at Yale University (USA). She holds a B.A in International Studies and Studio Arts from Trinity College, CT (USA) and an M.Phil from Yale University. Her work has been featured at the Mather Art Gallery (Hartford, CT), the New Haven Documentary Film Festival (New Haven, CT), Hanoi DocFest (Hanoi, Vietnam), and Ethnografilm Paris (France), among others.