Truong Tran on Channeling the Violence of White Supremacy Into Art

Truong Tran is a Vietnamese-American artist and poet whose work explores themes of identity, race, and violence through the medium of collage.

His practice involves cutting out images of butterflies from magazines, particularly from depictions of white male bodies, and repurposing them as artistic material.

This act began as a protest against artist Damien Hirst’s 1991 installation In and Out of Love, which involved the death of 9,000 butterflies.

Tran initially matched this number by cutting out 9,000 male genitals and anuses from images, symbolizing his critique of what he describes as the arrogance or offensiveness of such art.

Over time, his work evolved from protest to a meditative and artistic practice, though the act of cutting remains tied to themes of loss and mourning.