dellaram vreeland

Hop Dac was only three years old when his family made the move to Australia.

“During the Vietnam War my father was helping to run a POW camp,” Hop says. “He had to keep this under wraps after the war ended as he would likely have been detained, tortured and imprisoned.

“As it was, he was forced into re-education camps, where he would have to look for landmines using a stick. He was locked up in a toilet block being interrogated for a week
with a number of other men (and snakes and rats). So we got out.”

Hop’s family was granted refuge in Australia, but there’s no doubt the resettlement was a significant adjustment, particularly as Hop grew older. “Most of the challenges come as you become more aware of what people think of you, how welcome you are in different situations, how much regard your existence and contributions are given, how much you’re allowed to participate in society, the differing expectations of your behaviour,” he says.

“How you’re able to deal with all this depends so much on your environment at home and if it isn’t stable, if your parents are trying to raise you while dealing with their own traumas, then it can get quite fraught as something you have to parse as an adolescent or adult.”

Throughout his life, Hop has turned to art as his safe space.

Initially settling in Geraldton, Western Australia, he studied fine art in Perth before moving to Victoria and studying professional writing. He currently lives in Geelong on the lands of the Wadawurrung.

“I came back to (art) recently because the pandemic had messed me up and I needed to remap my inner world to something I could recognise, which the activity of making pictures has always done for me.

“After a while I could feel my feet touch the bottom again. Now I enjoy constructing a picture, the process of incubating or discovering ideas, working out how it all comes together. Each picture is like a game or a puzzle.”

As a Vietnamese Australian, Hop says his work explores what it means to be part of the Viet diaspora, and what that means in Australia. And while most of his published stories or essays are about the Viet experience, his latest work-in-progress is a fantasy novel that is “not about any of that at all”.

More than anything, he hopes his work elicits joy.

“…celebrates the pleasure of seeing, the pleasure of paint, and work that is narrative based, that can combine all of the above.”

“The world at large may be a giant bin fire but within our own streets and towns, we can create safe spaces for people to express themselves and share in life. Making art is one of the things that can do that.”

Hop Dac

Having lived in the city and the country, Hop says he’s found it easier to build strong, creative communities with like-minded folk in regional Australia – something he hopes to achieve through his visual art and his writing.

“I think if you’re community-minded, if you want to actively work with other people to build
something supportive or inspiring, then it’s perhaps easier to do in the country. It might be
harder to find people more like yourself, but what you do has greater impact to quality of
life, firstly for yourself and your own creative community, but then more broadly as well.

“More and more I think what we can do for our local community is all that we can control.
The world at large may be a giant bin fire but within our own streets and towns, we can
create safe spaces for people to express themselves and share in life. Making art is one of
the things that can do that. Contributing to community is something that’s become quite
important to me the last few years.”

Hop Dac will feature in an upcoming exhibition titled Heart and Home at Boom Gallery between December 7 and 22. For more details, click here.

Discover how Hop’s art is contributing towards an inspiring creative landscape here: @hop.dac.art

Words: Dellaram Vreeland
Images: Supplied