After trampling in the muddy rice fields of rural Vietnam then learning to read product labels in supermarket aisles in the United States, Millian Pham received her BFA in painting and printmaking from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. She further disappointed her family and the Tulsa Vietnamese Catholic community by doubling-down on her passion with an MFA in sculpture from the University of Florida. Pham uses her art practice to dismantle social and cultural expectations through the mediums of painting, printmaking, sculpture, performance, and installation. Her current visual investigation balances the reading of images with the visual experience of texts. To combat negative perceptions through language and break cycles of generational curses, Pham uses formal and pictorial devices in her works to create phenomenological effects of perceptual switching as metaphors for code-switching. Her visual research has been exhibited nationally and internationally in Canada, Pakistan, Korea, and across the United States. Pham was an artist-in-resident for the I-Park Artist Enclave, the Hambidge Art Center, ACRE, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She currently serves as the Art Editor of Broadsided Press and the FATE Director of Programming. She is currently the Studio Art Foundations Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art at Auburn University in Alabama, where she also keeps her studio practice.
