Love Us — Queering the Sacred
Dec 2021

This project, Love Us — Queering the Sacred, explores the tension between queerness, ancestral connection, and our sacred rituals and spaces. As a queer person of Vietnamese diaspora, I’ve often felt both curious and alienated when it comes to my lineage. Ancestry is a recurring theme in diasporic discourse, and as my awareness of it grew, I struggled to understand my relationship with my ancestors- geographically, emotionally, and spiritually. How do I call in ancestors whose names I don’t know, red threads severed by colonization, displacement, and time and who may never fully understand me, a fat, queer, nonbinary person?

Growing up in a Vietnamese Buddhist household, I was surrounded by images and rituals that felt distant and familiar all at once. My queerness complicated these connections. This work is about honoring that complexity of grief, of love, of rupture and potential repair. I am beginning to feel how my ancestors who may not have had the language for queerness but perhaps will love me anyway. And with this imagining, I can extend this offering to my family and loved ones now, that even in misunderstanding, care can still exist.

Through collage, symbolism, and visual storytelling, I attempt to reclaim the sacred on queer terms- by recreating the altars I saw as a child, and by honoring my bed, my altar where I rest, dream, despair, and love.