In poetry I sit in thought ︎︎︎ Words and definitions call upon the experience, the body ︎︎︎ Returning to the body I come to performance ︎︎︎ Performance I conjure a feeling ︎︎︎ These feelings embody memory, texture, sound  ︎︎︎ I turn inwards to a time and place called rhythm ︎︎︎ In rhythm I find poetry




Theresa-Xuan Bui (b. 1998)
theresabui98@gmail.com
CV | Resume︎ ︎


Artist Statement

Theresa-Xuan questions the intersections of the personal and political as a means to critically imagine the future. Through interdisciplinary processes such as drawing and dance, they translate their embodied practice into a performance of language and sound. Their work does not seek to answer or proclaim, but rather, openly process the self within larger power structures. At the center of their practice lies the question: How will I honor my loved ones, my sisters, the liminal, the radical, exquisite, and unseen? To answer, I write.

Reflecting on the complications of ownership, inclusion, and exclusion of the English language and subsequently, the American Dream itself, Theresa works to deconstruct language to interrogate the weight of this language on their generation, and past generations, who bought into the “pearly promises of America.” Exposing these barriers allows for the possibility of a future beyond our present confines.

Bio

Theresa-Xuan Bui is an interdisciplinary artist working in poetry, performance, video, and sculpture. They are a child of the Bui household, a legacy of Vietnamese refugees and vanguard Asian-Americans. Born and raised in Bronx, NY, Theresa moved to Houston, TX before pursuing a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MIC/A). Their work has been exhibited at the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities (Washington, D.C.), Tang Teaching Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), Otis Mountain Get Down (Elizabethtown, NY), Arlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA), Community College of Baltimore County Essex Gallery (Baltimore, MD), Yale School of Architecture (New Haven, CT), Seattle Asian American Film Festival (Seattle, WA), and Washington Project for the Arts (Washington, D.C). Their work has been supported by ADK Quad-County SCR Grant (2024). They’ve served as a committee ambassador for the Southeast Asian Diaspora Project and juried for the MICA Ginsberg Prize for Poetry (2023) which they won the previous year (2022). Bui is currently on sabbatical after working for an artist residency in the Adirondacks of New York.