Tran T. Kim-Trang

Tran T. Kim-Trang is a Vietnamese-American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She works across multiple media, including video, new media, and installation. Major themes in her works include visual dynamics, immigration, biotechnology, and relationships to technology. She has exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Biennial (2000). Tran is a Professor of Art and Media at Scripps College in Claremont, California.

Life Tran was born in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam in 1966. She moved to the United States in 1975, at the age of nine. Tran received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Iowa, and her Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts.

Work

Tran’s art practice spans multiple media and approaches, including video, installation, and new media. Certain themes are repeated across her works, such as immigrant experiences, technology, and vision. She is best known for her video works, collectively titled The Blindness Series.

The Blindness Series The Blindness Series is a series of eight experimental videos that deals with the theme of blindness and vision, produced between 1992 and 2006. In her artist statement Tran mentions the importance of vision for artists and her fear of becoming blind as motivating the work. Additionally, she has stated that the series was inspired in part by an exhibition curated by Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, which used works from the Louvre’s collection that dealt with blindness. the video examines the role of eyes and vision in relation to race, gender, and sexuality. It juxtaposes video and audio clips, such as images of Asian eyes and a punk song repeating the phrase “Lights out! Poke your eyes out!”, and various voice clips expressing racialized views of Asians related to eyes. Tran states that the work’s non-linear structure is intended to reflect the process of visual perception and cognition. The multi-layered, collage-like editing is also typical of video art of the 1990s.

Operculum The second of the series, Operculum, deals with cosmetic blepharoplasty. Much of the video uses a split screen, the right side with Tran in consultation with plastic surgeons as if planning to get the procedure, and on the left scrolling text about a historical doctor, which mentions a technique for lobotomy through the eye socket, performed with an ice pick.

Kore The third video, Kore, addresses vision and sexuality. It includes an activist speaking about women, AIDS, drug testing, and cytomegalovirus (which can cause blindness.) The artist also includes video recordings of herself and her guests from cameras set up in her own home.

Ekleipsis The fifth installment, Ekleipsis, focuses on “the largest group of hysterically blind people in the world,”

Alexia The sixth video, Alexia, addresses this condition, also commonly referred to as word blindness. The video includes many elements: a part where red text and images fade in and out, a white vignette featuring a finger pointing at a text label that reads “DO NOT MISTAKE THE FINGER FOR THE MOON” a reference to poet-philosopher Gongsun Long, and barely readable words alongside Moonlight Sonata and Tran’s voice disguised. Many of the images Tran used in the segment are taken from the book Understanding Visual Metaphors. Mihail and Tran are artists who “pose as scientists who want to be artists.” The work wanted to raise the public’s awareness in biotechnology and allow them to create a conversation about the ethical issues surrounding genetic modification and consumerism. The work consists of a triptych of Machinimas made of video footage from the game Second Life, a game in which players exist in a 3D virtual world. In this collaboration with her brothers, Tran features a house for her mother, an all giving tree, and her mother’s children.

Arizona 9 Arizona 9 is a visual novel with puzzle elements describing the death of Brisenia Flores. It features three levels in which the user finishes puzzles of Flores and a younger Shawna Forde, one of the perpetrators who killed Flores. Tran uses a game as a way for people to engage with difficult subject matter while considering an alternative outcome to the murder. Tran also thinks about gaming as a way to reach individuals who wouldn’t know about the incident initially.

Movements: Battles and Solidarity Movements: Battles and Solidarity is a three-channel video installation “exploring the connections between women of color and their shared socio-political and physical 'movements,'” comparing the Vietnam War, the fashion industry, and labour movements of the early 1970s. The work was installed as part of the exhibition To View A Plastic Flower at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in February 2020.

Select exhibitions and screenings

1995: Paris Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Paris, France 1996: Tapes that Think, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario 1997: Surveillance Culture/Surveying Culture, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California 1999: 15th World Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam, Holland 2000: Whitney Biennial 2000, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York 2002: 7th Annual Women of Color Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, California 2006: Tomorrowland: Calarts in Moving Pictures, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York 2010: Sorting Daemons: Art, Surveillance, and Social Control, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario 2010: Duan Xuan Festival, Hebbel Theatre, Berlin, Germany