EVENT DETAILS

Music, Letters, Home: An Exhibit Celebrating the Journey of Composer Chinary Ung and Actor Kalean Ung

How do we imagine home after genocide? How can music and performing arts enable new ways to engage with the haunting of war, genocide, and displacement? For Chinary Ung and his daughter, Kalean Ung, their connection to Cambodia and each other are explored through letters Chinary received from Cambodia and refugee camps in the 1980s. Carrying reverberations of a trauma-filled history, the letters were tucked away for years after Chinary and his wife, Susan, fought to save family members and acquaintances from Cambodia. Through the discovery and exploration of these letters, Kalean pushes her father to remember and to help her tell their stories through music and performance.

During the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) approximately two million Cambodians perished under the reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. This included a majority of Chinary Ung’s family. He came to the United States in 1964 to study music and music also became his escape from the Pol Pot regime. Through an oral history of Chinary Ung and the letters he collected after the Cambodian Genocide, this exhibit tells the story of a Cambodian American experience shaped by music, longing, and love.

Curated by Thuy Vo Dang and Kalean Ung. Designed by James Dinh. The exhibit will run in the Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center from February 5 - April 1, 2020. For more information, please contact Thuy Vo Dang (thuy.vodang@uci.edu).  Please rsvp by clicking here.