Label Type
Artist CommentaryLabel
Courtesy of the artist.
Julie Thi Underhill is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator in Berkeley, California. On April 29, 1975, Julie’s parents evacuated on an Air America helicopter from the rooftop of the Pittman Apartments at 22 Gia Long Street in Sài Gòn. It’s uncertain whether their defining moment was captured by Dutch photojournalist Hubert van Es. Yet Julie has long regarded his evacuation photographs as part of her family album. Her Chăm-French mother—an ARVN war widow driving for United Nations delegations—left five children from her previous marriage when she fled Việt Nam. She struggled to retrieve them before leaving, but Highway 1 was bombed, permitting no passage. The youngest child was murdered postwar, and four others emigrated to the US after living without parents for sixteen years. Through painting 22 Gia Long Street Julie memorializes the traumatic losses of departing civilians forced to make irreconcilable choices to save their lives.