Coming Back Home, From Mind to Hand

Coming Back Home, From Mind to Hand exists as a physical slice of nostalgia, healing the tension between my ethnic background and my Westernized upbringing.

I was born in Vietnam just before the country underwent globalization and gradually adopted Western influences. My childhood was shaped by what felt like the last remnants of “authentic” Vietnamese culture—until English took over my mother tongue and Western values resonated more than those of my own.

Mentally, I grew distant from the place where I was born and raised. Physically, that distance became real when I moved to Canada in my teenage years. While living in a place that aligns with my values makes sense, home will always feel like the other side of the globe, and my ethnic identity continues to inform the way I create.

This installation is my attempt to reconnect with my Vietnamese heritage. By recreating a domestic space from childhood memories using materials from the West, I was able to relieve the tension between cultural paradigms. The process of making and building each piece by hand, from the memory of what I grew up seeing and experiencing, is in itself me coming home, from mind to hand.