Phung Huynh (b. 1977, Rạch Giá, Vietnam) is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator whose practice includes drawing, painting, public art, and community engagement. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with distinction from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
Inspired by her family's history as refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia, Huynh explores cultural assimilation and identity formation. Huynh’s work examines identity through various perspectives, highlighting the changes in translations. She studies how ideas are imported, disassembled, and reconstructed within the contemporary American landscape. Integrating traditional Asian iconography with American popular trends, she highlights interpretations and appropriations. Huynh investigates how authenticity alters within a capitalist context to engage viewers with a Western-leaning perspective.
Recent exhibitions include Phung Huynh: Angkorian Homecoming, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Return Home, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Don’t Call Me FOB, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, CA; and Sobrevivir: Healing Through Art and Recognizing the History of Coerced Sterilizations, Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Museum at California State University, Long Beach, CA; Center for Creativity and the Arts at Fresno State University, Fresno, CA; Asia Society Texas, Houston, TX; School of Art and Design, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA; USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA; Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery at California State University Los Angeles, CA; Cerritos College Art Gallery, Norwalk, CA; José Drudis-Biada Art Gallery at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles, CA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Self Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA; U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; among others.
Phung Huynh’s work can be found in prominent collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA; USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA; Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University, Orange, CA; and the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine Art Collection, Pasadena, CA, as well as private collections. She is the recipient of numerous honors including, most recently, the Marciano Art Foundation Artadia Award (2024), Los Angeles, CA; Fellows for the Lucas Artists Program, Montalvo Arts Center for the Arts, Saratoga, CA; Women of Impact Award, 49th Assembly District, California; California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artist Fellows; California Arts Council Individual Established Artist Fellowship; Semifinalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2022, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and the 2021 COLA Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at California State University Los Angeles and served as the Chair of the Public Art Commission for the City of South Pasadena and Chair of the Prison Arts Collective Advisory Council. She is currently on the Board of Directors for LA Más, a non-profit organization that serves BIPOC working class immigrant communities in Northeast Los Angeles.
Phung Huynh
Norton Simon Museum Head of Buddha F.1975.10, 2023
Graphite on paper
41 x 33 in (104.1 x 83.8 cm) Framed
Phung Huynh
Cleveland Museum of Art Colossal Head of a Deva 2011.147, 2024
Graphite on paper
41 x 33 in (104.1 x 83.8 cm) Framed
Phung Huynh
USC Pacific Asia Museum Avalokitesvara 1996.1.3, 2023
Graphite on paper
41 x 33 in (104.1 x 83.8 cm) Framed
Phung Huynh
Cleveland Museum of Art Head of Lokeshvara 1995.47, 2024
Graphite on paper
41 x 33 in (104.1 x 83.8 cm) Framed
Phung Huynh
MET Head of Buddha cat.no.48 Returned, 2023
Graphite on paper
41 x 33 in (104.1 x 83.8 cm) Framed
Phung Huynh
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Head of a female deity B60S100, 2024
Graphite on paper
41 x 33 in (104.1 x 83.8 cm) Framed
Phung Huynh
LACMA Head of Buddha Shakyamuni M.84.147, 2023
Graphite on paper
41 x 33 in (104.1 x 83.8 cm) Framed
Phung Huynh
Jayavarman VII 2023, 2024
Print on poly sheer fabric
96 x 36 in (243.8 x 91.4 cm)
Phung Huynh
Angkor Wat Buddha Statue With Naga Canopy 2023, 2024
Print on poly sheer fabric
96 x 36 in (243.8 x 91.4 cm)
Phung Huynh
Angkor Wat Small Naga Buddha Statue 2023, 2024
Print on poly sheer fabric
96 x 36 in (243.8 x 91.4 cm)
Phung Huynh
Angkor Wat Lakshmi Statue 2023, 2024
Print on poly sheer fabric
96 x 36 in (243.8 x 91.4 cm)
Phung Huynh
Angkor Wat Naga Buddha Statue with Jasmines 2023, 2024
Print on poly sheer fabric
96 x 36 in (243.8 x 91.4 cm)
Phung Huynh
Ganesha Returned 2023, 2024
Print on poly sheer fabric
96 x 36 in (243.8 x 91.4 cm)
Phung Huynh
Angkor Thom Guardian Statue 2023, 2024
Print on poly sheer fabric
96 x 36 in (243.8 x 91.4 cm)
Return Home brings together an installation of ornately framed graphite drawings and photographic banners that seek to ritually unite fragments of sacred Khmer Buddha statue heads that were looted from Cambodia. Phung Huynh examines Cambodian sculptures that memorialize the Golden Age of Khmer culture from the 9th to the 15th centuries, particularly the Buddha heads that are currently housed in American art museums and the remnants of the statues' bodies remaining in the temples of Cambodia. Huynh initiates critical dialogues in the pressing matters of repatriation and provenance within the collections of American institutions.
The looting of Khmer statues from sacred temple sites began when France colonized Cambodia in the late 19th century. The carpet bombing of Cambodia during President Nixon’s administration and the American War in Vietnam opened the floodgates for the Khmer Rouge Genocide of the 1970s which eliminated 90% of the country’s artists and shattered the cultural landscape of Cambodians. Huynh frames her project as both personal and political:
“As a daughter of a Cambodian father who survived war and genocide of the 1970s, I am well aware of how Cambodia became a vulnerable place for destruction and the theft of so many of our statues that are essentially vessels for our divine, ancestors, and cultural heritage. Considering the profound impact of war, genocide, and American imperialism, my artwork is built on the desire (for them) to return home and focuses on the repatriation of ancestral art and heritage to Cambodia.”
Return Home includes seven drawings of Khmer statue heads sourced from American museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the USC Pacific Asia Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Encased in gold gilt frames, the statue heads float in the negative space of the paper, each volume and detail of the head carefully rendered and positioned with dignity, emphasizing their removal from their original context—obscuring meaning, place, and connection.
The lack of context and even knowledge about these objects is often highlighted by the way the institutions assign titles, positioning them in anonymity and erasure, with catalog numbers and generic names such as “Head of Buddha, Deity,” “Head of a Deity,” “Head of a Door Guardian,” etc. Huynh’s works also offer a critique of commercially produced appropriations of the Buddha's head—as a decorative design item, garden motif, or commodified object—finding them to be problematic in their disrespect of the Buddha and Theravada Buddhism, and in the acceptance and normalization of the illicit traffic in cultural property.
The translucent banners are printed with images of decapitated and dismembered Khmer statues that were photographed by Huynh during her visits to sacred temple sites in Cambodia. There, she found many mutilated statues of Buddha, Lakshmi, and other deities sitting in dark silent corridors and niches. For example, the statue of Lakshmi at Angkor Wat had no head but was adorned with a glittering golden dress, while the toes of a monumental statue of Vishnu were broken off and made into amulets. The banners will be activated through a ritual performed by classical Cambodian dancers during the opening of the exhibition. The dancers’ blessings and interactions will make the bodies spiritually whole and give contrast to how such statues are taken out of their cultural and spiritual context when they are in museums.
Phung Huynh: Pink Donut Boxes explores the lived experiences of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees resettled in Southern California, home to one of the largest Southeast Asian refugee populations in the world. In these works, Huynh transforms the pink donut box—a cultural icon in Southern California—into a powerful signifier of survival, resilience, and collective memory, using it as a backdrop to delicate portraits of the artist, her parents, and other members of the refugee community. Phung Huynh: Pink Donut Boxes is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Against Monoculture, which explores intersections of art and activism in relation to food justice.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is thrilled to announce Phung Huynh as a recipient of the 2024 Los Angeles Artadia Awards. Since its inception in 1999, Artadia has steadfastly championed emerging talents, leaving an indelible mark on the cultural landscape. Over the past 25 years, Artadia has been a catalyst for artistic innovation, providing crucial financial support, mentorship, and recognition to countless artists who have gone on to shape the culture of contemporary art. In its 25th year, Artadia is thrilled to continue doing what it does best – providing impact that not only includes financial assistance, while also cultivating a community that values artistic expression and champions the next generation of visionaries.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce Phung Huynh as a 2023 Montavlo Arts Center artist fellow. Of 370 applicants, 65 artists—spanning careers from emerging to established—were awarded Lucas Artists Fellowships: 30 in the field of visual arts, 19 in literary arts, and 16 in music/composition and performing arts.
Luis De Jesus is proud to announce the Museum of Modern Art's accession of Arn Chorn-Pond, 2023, by Phung Huynh, into the permanent collection. This graphite drawing on a pink donut box depicts Arn Chorn-Pond, a Cambodian musician, human rights activist, and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime. He is an advocate for the healing and transformative power of the arts, especially music. Arn Chorn-Pond is one of nine works in Huynh's sold out series, From the Donut Box, informed by her experience as a refugee of Cambodian and Chinese descent from vietnam.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce that Phung Huyn has been named the 2023 honoree in art for the Women of Impact Awards.
The Women of Impact Awards was created in honor of Women’s History Month to spotlight the efforts of our extraordinary women in the 77th Assembly District.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that Phung Huynh has been awarded a 2022 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artist Fellows. The CCF fellowships are one of the most "prestigious arts fellowships in the region, which helps artists build successful, sustainable careers that support the thriving Los Angeles arts scene."
By Meghan Dwan
The University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities opened their new exhibit “Angkorian Homecoming” March 20, exploring Cambodian and Vietnamese experiences of immigration, assimilation and settling in the United States. Through her art, Cambodian refugee and artist Phung Huynh reflects on her experiences as an immigrant through prints and drawings.
L.A. artist Huynh’s graphite drawings and photographic banners of Khmer Buddha statue heads looted from Cambodia provoke conversation about the provenance of artifacts in U.S. museum collections.
By Kristin Sakoda
The National Association of Counties (NACo) is dedicated to the advancement of excellence in public service, and annually, NACo recognizes new and exceptional government programs from counties across the nation. We are so excited to win six achievement awards this year, for artist Phung Huynh’s work with Office of Immigrant Affairs in our Creative Strategist program; Phung’s work (again!) on our Civic Art Division’s community engagement-rich commission of her artwork Sobrevivir at the Los Angeles General Medical Center; the Countywide Cultural Policy and two projects that came from it, the Arts and Culture Needs Assessment and County of Los Angeles Land Acknowledgment and Toolkit developed with Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission and Tribal members; and the aforementioned Creative Wellbeing initiative.
Noel Alumit profiles the Cambodian American artist Phung Huynh who’s repairing Buddhist statues — and, in the process, connecting to her own heart.
Whether they’re looking at looted Greek antiquities, stolen indigenous artifacts—even remains—or Jewish-owned art pillaged during World War II, museumgoers often overlook just how exactly these pieces came to be in a museum’s possession. This question of provenance arose for artist Phung Huynh when reflecting on thousands of decapitated Buddha heads from Asian countries in museum collections...
By David M. Roth
What is it about American culture that compels each wave of new arrivals to slam the door behind them, blocking entry for those who wish to follow? P L A C E: Reckonings by Asian American Artists, an exhibition at the ICA San José of 12 California artists and three collectives, attempts to address that and a host of other thorny immigration-related issues.
On Thursday, September 7, 2023, at 3 PM, Pepperdine Libraries will present a panel conversation with artist Phung Huynh, whose exhibition, Donut (W)hole, is on display in the Payson Library Exhibit Gallery through September 10, 2023. The event is free and will be held in the Surfboard Room at they Payson Library on the Malibu campus.
American assimilation and its effect on identity has long interested Phung Huynh, 46, who left her country after the end of the war. Her 2021 series, “American Braised,” which is currently on view in the exhibition “Vietnam in Transition, 1976-Present” at the Wende Museum in Culver City, Calif., inlays imagery from her own refugee experience into glass snow globes atop cumbersome wooden bases.
Everyone has a story to share. Phung Huynh, a Los Angeles-based artist and educator who has exhibited her works internationally as well as completing public art commissions across Los Angeles County, came to Scripps College to share hers.
November in Los Angeles brings us shows that highlight art’s role as both a reflection of everyday life and a force to help change our reality. An exhibition at Angels Gate Cultural Center showcases the multifaceted programs of the community-based Slanguage Studio. Shows at the Vincent Price Art Museum and Skirball Cultural Center highlight the potential of art to memorialize and record our histories.
Phung Huynh is an L.A. artist and educator – and creator of sobrevivir, which means survival in Spanish. The artwork was commissioned to publicly apologize to the over 240 largely Mexican immigrant women who were forcibly sterilized at the hospital in the ‘60s and ‘70s
While for many Californians pink donut boxes signal little more than the arrival of a favorite snack, for Cambodian refugees and their children, the ubiquitous, cheerful-looking packaging is often deeply intertwined with their family history of resettling in the United States. Several years ago, Phung Huynh realized the bright pink packaging offered a highly symbolic and visually striking canvas for her drawings. The portraits depict her family and other members of Cambodian and Vietnamese communities in an effort to highlight their stories of hardship, trauma and resilience.
The 2022 FVA fellows are: April Banks (Interdisciplinary-Mixed Media); Nao Bustamante (Interdisciplinary-Mixed Media); Enrique Castrejon (Installation); Patty Chang (Interdisciplinary-Mixed Media); June Edmonds (Painting); Reanne Estrada (Interdisciplinary-Mixed Media); Asher Hartman (Installation and Experimental Film and Video); Iris Yirei Hu (Installation); Phung Huynh (Painting); Young Joon Kwak (Interdisciplinary-Mixed Media); Sandra Low (Painting); and Suné Woods (Experimental Film and Video).
At the heart of this garden, there is now a new monument that is not only poignant but also timely. “Sobrevivir,” by L.A. artist Phung Huynh, marks the coerced sterilizations that once took place at the hospital in the 1960s and ’70s — mostly of Mexican women from working-class backgrounds. It also pays tribute the 10 people who filed a class-action lawsuit against L.A. County doctors, the state and the federal government for sterilizing them without adequate consent.
"I want the art to be impactful and meaningful and create a deep experience for contemplation for viewers," said artist Phung Huynh. "The material is made of metal to symbolize the mother's strength, and I want this to last forever."
A new art project is intended to serve as an apology to the more than 200 women who suffered forced sterilizations decades ago at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Artist Phung Huynh's piece, "Sobrevivir," the Spanish word for "survive," serves as an ode to the survivors, many of whom immigrated from Mexico.
During a somber unveiling ceremony Monday on a grassy courtyard at LAC + USC hospital, county officials gave the public the first look at “Sobrevivir,” an art installation by Cambodian-American artist Phung Huynh of Los Angeles in the works since 2018, ever since the county Board of Supervisors issued a motion containing an apology.
It’s a part of our history which isn’t often talked about, the coerced sterilization of thousands of women across the country, including in L.A. County. Now one hospital is taking steps to acknowledge and apologize.
A story which is now being unboxed. Phung Hyunh is a Cambodian-American artist who came to America as a refugee. In her exhibit, "Doughnut (W)hole," at Self Help Graphics & Art in Los Angeles, she uses a pink doughnut box instead of a white canvas to capture a taste of the Cambodian-American refugee experience.
Huynh hopes to uplift doughnut kids by centering their stories and experiences in her latest work. While history can benefit from a variety of perspectives, Huynh says that it can be problematic when those who exist only on the periphery are the sole authors of the past. “I really am against the whole American dream narrative — ‘Look at these Asians, they come here and they pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they’re successful’ — because it demonizes purposely Black and brown folks. It also masks the extreme trauma that our parents faced and experienced, and how that trauma is passed down,” she says.
Huynh, a bubbly 44-year-old with black bangs sweeping across her face, created these portraits first by drawing her subjects in a style reminiscent of Pop Art, then silkscreening them, along with vintage family photographs, onto the pink cardboard donut boxes that have become emblematic of donut shops run by Cambodian-Americans. "These donut shops represent a cultural space where refugees and immigrants reshape their lives in the process of negotiating, assimilating and becoming American," Huynh writes.
"Donut (W)hole" expands on Huynh's earlier body of work portraying first-generation Khmericans on pink doughnut boxes using graphite pencil. A refugee herself, Huynh could relate to many of her subjects' experiences of hard work and persistence. Huynh's father fled the Cambodian genocide and eventually relocated to the United States from Vietnam with his family, but not before spending some time in a Thai refugee camp.
