FEE: Free
Threads of Offering | Thương Hoài Trần
June 27, 2026 – January 24, 2027 | The Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium & Xcel Energy Gallery at Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND
Threads of Offering presents the work of interdisciplinary Vietnamese American artist Thương Hoài Trần, whose creative practice explores identity, family history, displacement, memory, and diasporic connection through processes of weaving and unweaving.
Bringing together two major bodies of work — Ông Bà and Made in Vietnam — the exhibition examines the emotional and cultural complexities of immigration, generational disconnect, and labor. In Ông Bà, Vietnamese for “grandparents,” Hoài Trần creates monumental woven portraits honoring their family members. Each strand of yarn is hand dyed before being woven into large-scale portraits and partially unraveled, symbolizing fragmented memories, unspoken histories, and complicated familial relationships. Standing between seven and eight feet tall, the works evoke the presence of ancestors towering over viewers in the Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium.
Displayed in the Xcel Energy Gallery, Made in Vietnam features garments labeled “Made in Vietnam” that the artist collected, altered, and investigated through various material interventions. One featured work documents Hoài Trần painstakingly disassembling garments thread by thread over more than 24 hours, condensed into a one-minute video critiquing the hidden labor and exploitation embedded within fast fashion production. The work also functions as a self-portrait reflecting on diasporic identity and cultural inheritance.
Born in Tây Ninh, Vietnam and raised in Emporia, Kansas, Thương Hoài Trần holds degrees from Emporia State University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their work has been exhibited nationally at institutions including the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, The Center for Craft, and the Studios at MASS MoCA.
Gallery admission is free every day of the week.
Generous support is provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; the Arts Partnership; the McKnight Foundation; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; Giving Hearts Day donors; Spring Gala sponsors; and Plains Art Museum members.
