Thesis
Threads of Becoming
Washington State University
Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Washington State University
05/2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000007408
Abstract
We are born into structures shaped by culture and society. From a young age, we are taught how to walk, talk, feel, and behave. These lessons are imparted through education, parental expectations, religion, laws, and governmental systems. Language frames these intricate rules and knowledge. But is it possible to question this conditioning and truly understand who we are beyond such structures?
As an immigrant who moved from Vietnam to the United States nearly ten years ago, my experience of adapting to a new culture, language, and societal framework has profoundly shaped my identity. This journey has taught me resilience and adaptability. It has also shown me the importance of questioning my beliefs, unlearning what I have been taught, rethinking what has been coded into my mind, and unfolding the structures that have shaped my understanding of the world, and ultimately, taught me how to live.
This thesis explores the process of self-reconstruction within the immigrant experience, examining how cultural displacement challenges notions of identity and belonging. Threads of Becoming includes works that reflect a personal journey of self-discovery and adaptation, but they also extend beyond the personal, gesturing toward a collective process of transformation. By engaging with these installations and performances, viewers are invited to participate in this unfolding: to move, to reflect, to become. In the space of art, we are free to construct new languages, new ways of seeing, and new ways of being. We can weave, unweave, and weave again, with each stitch becoming a step toward reimagining what is possible.
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Details
- Title
- Threads of Becoming
- Creators
- Duyen Le
- Contributors
- Squeak Meisel (Chair)Krista Brand (Committee Member)Reza Safavi (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Fine Arts
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 22
- Identifiers
- 99901220447001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis