Tram Carin Luong
Tram (Carin) Luong (b. 1992, Vietnam) is a lens-based multimedia artist, anthropologist, and educator based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Her work is situated at the intersection of anthropology, visual arts, and public advocacy, often taking a research-based approach to artistic mediation. Luong’s work investigates the rhizome of connections between modern life and the turns of history, foregrounding the links between collective memories, historical trauma, and cultural representations. Having trained under the tutelage of photographer Pablo Delano and urban anthropologist Erik Harms, Luong follows a multidisciplinary framework that merges inspirations from ethnographic methods, critical theory, and semiotics.
In her multimodal works, archival materials often find new lives in the forms of still and moving images, as well as other mixed-media formats. Through its versatile and bricolage form, Luong’s art practice enriches both her theoretical and pedagogical interests, bringing topics such as the continued legacies of colonialism, the politics of anthropological knowledge, the image of the Other, and the logics of the postcolonial/postmodern archives closer to communities where she creates and works.
Luong holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University (USA) and a B.A in International Studies and Studio Arts from Trinity College (USA). Her work has been featured at the Busan Cinema Center (Korea), the Ethnografilm Paris Festival (France), the Mather Art Gallery (USA), the New Haven Documentary Film Festival (USA), and Hanoi DocFest (Vietnam), among others.