Teo Nguyen in Jackie Akerberg’s Jackfruit Kitchen

11/6/2024

Teo Nguyen is a Minneapolis-based painter whose “The Politics of Worthiness” (PoW) visited Des Moines on a world tour reimagining how war is perceived. Jackie Akerberg is a wealth management guru, author of “The Clean Vegan Cookbook,” and creator of The Jackfruit Kitchen, a food blog with nearly half a million followers. She is also a collector of Teo’s paintings. We asked Teo and his partner Micah Tran to lunch when their exhibition was in residence at Moberg Gallery. We met in Akerberg’s home kitchen where she hosted Teo and Micah in Des Moines. 

We talked over a non-vegan platter starring aged Manchego, La Quercia prosciutto, Castelvetrano olives, exotic jams and accompanied by Akerberg’s favorite “clean” cocktail — a mix of London gin, Champagne and pomegranate juice. (Micah and Teo are partners in the project and in life. They spoke for each other here.)

Because I am a food writer, I had to ask which of the two James Beard Award winning Vietnamese cafes in Minneapolis is their favorite. 

“Young Joni is good but we think Hai Hai is really exciting.”

I have been to both and think Des Moines has better Vietnamese restaurants, like Kim Anh’s Pho All Seasons and Don Cotran’s Pho 515 inside C Fresh Market. 

“Like Ranch 99 in California. Those are always the best. We will try them the next time we are in Des Moines.”  

Eastern aesthetics are often defined as the interfusion of sentiment and place. “PoW” is consumed with displacement and places denuded of their most infamous contexts. Has displacement been an active or inactive process in your personal life journey?

“I was born near Cam Ran Bay, which was an American military base when my parents were ‘placed’ there. The architects of my family’s displacement were many. My mother grew up in Danang with a bomb shelter in the backyard. She was forced to move when she was 9. 

“Three of my four grandparents were killed by the French. My uncle was buried alive by the Communists, because he was an interpreter for Americans. In her life, my mother was displaced by the Japanese, the French, the Americans and the Communists. For most Vietnamese, all combatants were threatening.

“I emigrated to Northern California, San Jose, when I was 16. Later I moved to Southern California where I met Micah. He had come there when he was 4.”

How did you find your way to the Midwest? 

“We were crossing America to New York City where all artists are attracted. Teo fell in love with landscapes of the Midwest.”

As in Iowa, the story of most Midwestern displacement has been that of populations leaving rural areas for cities and suburbs because the jobs moved there. 

“Yes, abandoned farm houses speak. They beg to have their stories told. I have learned to embrace the American spirit of freedom that says, ‘If you see a road that interests you, go ahead — venture down it.’ ” 

Unlike Teo’s Midwest Landscape series, “PoW” subtracts by removing all emanations of violence from historically famous scenes. How did that evolve?

“I learned about the Vietnam War through movies, the news, and articles created by people whose point of view was not that of the subjects portrayed. General Westmorland said that Vietnam was ‘a war not a country’ and that ‘life is cheap in Vietnam.’ Such reductions labeled Vietnamese people as unworthy in order to justify colonialism, violence and its consequences. I wanted to remove the violence and let the landscapes reimagine their stories.”

That aesthetic is more familiar to Asian than American aesthetics. Here we need the subject to be depicted not implied. No? 

“Yes, animism is deeply ingrained in Vietnamese heritage, my spirit. Our aesthetics come from Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Animism is part of that. It is part of all my work.”

Paintings in “PoW” are all based on famous Vietnam War photos. Most Americans who are old enough to remember that war first learned about Agent Orange from the photo of Kim Phúc and other children running naked from napalm attacks. That is the only painting that you named for a subject rather than after your poetic suggestions. Why is that?

“That scene is particularly personal. Kim was 9 years old when the photo was taken. The same age as my mother when she was first displaced. I know Kim. She told me that she still feels the terrifying vulnerability of that moment. She asks why no one protected her. How could that image of her be used without her permission or compensation, to make the photographer famous and perpetuate her exploitation?”

Yet you remove all the evidence of violence and exploitation. Why?

“That is not the intention of an animist. My intention is to express reverence for the soul of the story which is embedded in the place itself.” 

That embedding is beautifully instilled in Teo’s film “My Life,” which tells the story of his mother’s displacement as a child and her return as an old woman. The cinematography is luscious, making it hard to imagine that such beautiful land was ever a battleground. As an old woman in the film, she touches far more than just plaster when feeling the walls that she said goodbye to a lifetime ago. The film, and Teo’s sculpture in “PoW,” tell war’s story symbolically. 

“We went to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. Two walls are inscribed with the names of all 58,220 Americans who died. They extend less than one-tenth of a mile. If a similar memorial was made for all the Vietnamese who died in the war, it would be 10 miles long. The War memorial in Hanoi only includes the North Vietnamese fighters who died. Clearly, a lot is always omitted.

“I wanted to create something that honors everyone not as adversaries but in shared humanity. My mother was a poet who looked for beauty in war. When you deconstruct a concept that is as broad as war, you displace any beauty — but that can still be suggested symbolically.” 

The painting “You Are Me and I Am You” depicts the infamous place where a South Vietnamese officer held a gun to the head of a Viet Cong man. Teo’s title certainly suggests more human interdependence than the violence it replaced.  

“From the vantage of my animist spirituality, these artworks are expressions of reverence — for the eclogues imprinted in the terrains.”

An exhibition of Teo’s Midwest Landscapes will play this December at Moberg Gallery. ♦