How Do You Say I Love You In Vietnamese? (2026)

Solo Exhibition at Noirfoto Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
January 24-27, 2026
Shot on 35mm, Inkjet Prints

How do you say I love you in Vietnamese? is a meditation on how love is expressed within Vietnamese culture, often not through words, but through action. Centered on the love language of acts of service, this project explores a cultural emphasis on care as labor, a love that is performed rather than expressed through words.

In my experience, Vietnamese love is enacted through gestures such as home-cooked meals, tending ancestral altars, and quiet physical care. These acts become a vocabulary of affection, where saying “I love you” is less important than showing it through action.

Growing up half-Vietnamese in America, I was physically distant from my culture, yet remained connected through this language of care. My grandmother picked me up from school almost every day, cooked me my favorite soups, and painted my nails. My grandfather delivered chả lụa and xôi from Little Saigon, worried we had not eaten enough. These gestures formed my earliest understanding of love as presence, responsibility, and offering.

This project traces how that inheritance has shaped my own understanding of giving and receiving love. During my first long-term stay in Vietnam, I sought to capture acts of service to represent how love is something practiced daily and often silently through friends, family, and strangers.