These mixed media pieces were done in protest to the US trade embargo against the people of Vietnam.  They were exhibited in 1995 at the Macy Art Gallery at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. The title of the exhibition was “POW • MIA • UFO”.  All of the images were based on the POW/MIA flag but I used statistics about the tragedy of the war to the Vietnamese people rather than the American people.

 

The POW/MIA flag was created for the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia and officially recognized by the United States Congress in conjunction with the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, “as the symbol of our Nation’s concern and commit-ment to resolving as fully as possible the fates of Americans still prisoner, missing and unac-counted for in Southeast Asia, thus ending the uncertainty for their families and the Nation.”

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No POWs were ever found after the official release by Hanoi of all U.S. prisoners in 1973. There are still several hundred U.S. MIAs, many of which will never be found. Vietnam, a country with less that 1/3 the population of the US, still has more than 200,000 MIAs.