The Thread Between Us: Reflections from My MCLA Arts Residency
This past semester, I had the honor of serving as the Benedetti Artist in Residence at MCLA. It was a rough winter in many ways, with the cold, travel, and the intensity of carrying multiple projects at once, but being at MCLA MOSAIC Gallery and EventSpace offered a meaningful place to land, create, teach, and gather. I was grateful for the opportunity to build cultural memory with students, faculty, and community members, while also amplifying the 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Memorial work with the MCLA, North Adams, and Berkshires communities. The residency allowed me to bring my practice into a new environment, one where questions of memory, belonging, refugee history, public art, and community care could be shared across different lived experiences and geographies.
A meaningful part of the residency was co-teaching the Arts Leadership course in Arts Management with Dr. Lisa Donovan. Together, we invited students to think about what it means to lead in the arts with care, purpose, and responsibility. The class became a space for honest conversations about creative practice, cultural work, public art, community engagement, project planning, and the invisible labor that often holds everything together. For me, teaching was not separate from my art practice. It was part of the same work of building relationships, asking deeper questions, and encouraging students to understand that arts leadership is not only about managing projects, but also about listening, showing up, and creating with intention.
Throughout the semester, I kept returning to the image of a thread. A thread can feel delicate, but it can also hold so much. It can mend, connect, gather, and carry memory. It can remind us of the people, places, meals, and stories that shape who we are. These ideas moved through the classroom, the gallery, and the conversations I had during the residency. They also connected back to my ongoing work with the 1975: Memorial, which honors Vietnamese refugee and diaspora stories while creating space for healing, intergenerational dialogue, and public remembrance. Bringing this work into conversation with MCLA and the wider North Adams and Berkshires communities felt especially meaningful because it allowed the project to grow beyond one place, while still staying rooted in the people and histories that shaped it.
The final immersive show, The Thread Between Us, became the culmination of the residency. Created in collaboration with Chef Tu Le of State Food & Drink, the evening brought together installation, food, storytelling, and participation. Food felt central to the work because it carries memory in such an intimate and familiar way. A meal can bring us back to a kitchen, a family table, a childhood home, or a place we still carry with us. Guests were invited to enter the space not only as viewers, but as part of the work itself, connecting threads with one another and helping shape the room through their own presence. In that shared space, the installation became a living network of gestures, stories, and connections.
One of the most meaningful parts of bringing The Thread Between Us to life was working with the wonderful installation team of MCLA students. Their care, creativity, and energy helped shape the final experience in ways that felt deeply collaborative. They were not simply helping with production. They became part of the spirit of the work. The final gathering was beautiful and full of warmth, with people arriving in a spirit of openness and curiosity. For a moment, the room became a shared table, a memory space, and a place to reflect on the relationships that hold us across difference, distance, and time.
I am deeply grateful to MCLA for holding this residency, to Dr. Lisa Donovan for the opportunity to co-teach and think alongside students in the Arts Management program, to Chef Tu Le for bringing so much care and artistry into the collaboration, to the student installation team for helping bring the work into form, and to everyone who showed up and became part of the final experience. This residency reminded me that art is not only about what we make. It is also about how we gather, how we listen, how we remember, and how we continue to find our way back to one another.
