Vo Tram Anh, a young Vietnamese girl
Currently, not many people in France know about the Agent Orange disaster during the Vietnam War. Moreover, worries about the present and the future have occupied their minds. So how to draw pictures which can combine graphic information to make people sympathize with the difficult-to-understand topic?
To solve this, Tram Anh decided to build a bridge with pieces of graphics. She brought something new and lively into a painful theme of the past. Looking at the picture, viewers will be touched understanding the effects of Agent Orange on the environment and society as well as why a Vietnamese woman, Tran To Nga, has persisted with the struggle for justice over the years and credit projects to help people with disabilities because of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
People’s emotion will shift from wondering what is Agent Orange and that’s really to asking themselves what to do for a better life. Tram Anh's works was shown publicly in August 2021 at the headquarters of the Vietnamese Association in France, and then exhibited at the City Hall of District 13 in Paris, on the same day of the workshop on the use of chemical weapons (December 1, 2021 ) .
Every journey has a beginning. Tram Anh recalled when she was 7-8 years old, her father - journalist Vo Trung Dung, started making reports on Agent Orange victims in Vietnam. She was shocked at seeing those pictures and the feeling at that time stayed in the memory.
Then in 2021, the Evry High Court in France opened a litigation session regarding Ms. Tran To Nga's lawsuit against US chemical companies that produced Agent Orange and sprayed it in Vietnam. This topic returned to the stage, the media began to report on the case more which awoke memories. Therefore, she wanted to spread this story through her drawings to young people.
Tram Anh talks about Agent Orange
She graduated from high school when she was 16 years old and obtained a master's degree in international business management from Paris Dauphine University at the age of 21. She used to work for large economic groups, dropped jobs to study graphic design for six months.
She revealed to be afraid of not being able to make a career in the field of art. As a result, she chose a multidisciplinary program - combining business, science and social sciences. After working for a large company, she realized she has not contributed greatly to the community.
Tram Anh remembered her father’s question that why she changed jobs continuously after college graduation; she just replied that she learnt to understand because if you want to understand, you have to find out the nature and the way it works to change anything. But even after graduating with a graphic design degree, Tram Anh still self-identified that her life is just focusing on advertising for companies selling kerosene and weapons. That’s a concern of a young girl and that shows her ideal of life.
In her heart, Tram Anh knows that graphic art has always been a part of her life. When she really pays attention to every little detail in daily life, she is inspired by the beauty of reflections in puddles, the architecture of buildings in Paris, the steam rising from a cup of coffee.
Gradually, the atmosphere Patrick Modiano described in the novel “In the cafe of lost youth”, Tram Anh was closer to Paul Auster's Moon Palace by empathizing with "the hard journey of finding the protagonist's identity through persons he meets".
She advised not to be afraid to travel alone to Montreal or New York because she has traveled to many places chatting with strangers such as Asians in France, Vietnamese people in Canada ... and realized that having a dual culture is a strength. She admitted to be now more confident than before.
