What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

– Muriel Rukeyser

Artist Statement

I have learned over and over again one valuable lesson that is at the heart of my work: No one else can tell my story; Everyone has a story to tell and everyone’s story is worth telling. While my performance experiences have brought me into a world rooted in writing and storytelling, my recent works use an interdisciplinary approach to creating art which mixes the visual, spoken and written into performed explorations of my hybrid identity. I am currently committed to exploring various artistic disciplines that will better inform my work as a multi-disciplinary artist who doesn’t easily fit into traditional boxes and as a writer who actively seeks interesting ways of storytelling. I want to better understand how my stories inhabit a given space and the visceral impact they have on audience. My work reflects my hybrid cultural experience of a refugee from Cambodia trying to understand what home means, a loud feminist woman of color learning to love and be loved, an American citizen with Asian features too often accused of “being a foreigner,” a Muslim woman in America on a spiritual quest, a citizen critical of our government, a survivor of war, and of an individual striving to find the artistic, spiritual, and political junctures of these identities. I create because the artistic process allows me access into understanding the complexities of these multilayered identities.

As a contemporary Asian American artist – I know I am working between many traditions. I come from a tradition of mixed culture. Today I continue to mix my own culture into existence. I am not only influenced by my Khmer cultural tradition of Apsara dance, classical ancient music, and folksongs but also by Hip Hop culture, spoken word, 80s music, my mother’s cooking, Butoh dance, puppetry, modern media and technology. My work mixes media, traditions and cultures with a clear intent to humanize experiences. I do not believe that tradition is made of rigid rules and strict definitions. It is the rigid rules, blind definitions, and dehumanizing acts by the Khmer Rouge that nearly annihilated Cambodian culture in the 1970s. I believe culture is fluid – it evolves – it grows – it changes­­ – it is complex. I believe as an artist – I have a responsibility to presenting complexities of culture and the human condition. As a survivor of genocide, it is up to the living to remember histories, to create living traditions and to pass along the visible and the invisible stories—that is how culture evolves and survives. We are the ones who will keep our culture alive. This is why I am compelled to perform stories specific to my Cambodian Muslim American identity.

I have also come to realize that my work doesn’t only belong in America nor should its dialogue and analysis be solely placed in one nation’s context. I am a person between cultures, languages and art forms. I define my communities through stories. I define my communities as my support networks, as my audiences, as my critics, and as my fellow artists. I see myself in multiple, sometimes overlapping, sometimes separate communities. My communities are local, regional, national, and global. I want to continue experimenting and learning how to bring these all together. In better understanding my own issues of home and identity as related to the Southeast Asian Diaspora, I am realizing the need for an international community and context for my work. I was not born in America; I remember leaving “home” and specifically leaving Cambodia. My family’s history is a lineage of mixed culture from Southeast Asia and in our migration/displacement to America I continue to be a bi-product of the mixing of cultural identities into a hybrid existence. I respond to the world through art, with art and about art. I believe art needs to be shared serving as an international language of hope that transcends cultural dialects, biases and borders. I refuse the margins. I refuse to remain silent. I refuse to let my stories and my family’s history disappear into any nation’s melting pot. I am compelled to create art that pushes through borders and demands to be heard!