Participating artists: Cat Gunn, Einar Escoto, Hamsa Fae, Jun!

Facilitator: Britt Pham

Curated by Jun!yi Min in collaboration with Emily Tran in 2023

Location: Mingei Museum, San Diego

Sponsored by: North County LGBTQ, The San Diego LGBT Community Center, City Heights Community Development

Collaborators: VIET VOTE, asian solidarity collective, Mingei International Museum, with special thanks to The City of San Diego

Press Coverage: San Diego artists focus on LGBTQ Asian experience in ‘family table’ event at Mingei Museum

The familial dinner table is often a daunting space for queer Asians because of unspoken games, awkwardness, hierarchical ideology, and passive aggressiveness. This one-day exhibition clears the table by forefronting open communication and providing space for communal witnessing. It gathers queer Asian narratives, bodies, and dreams to form a transient utopia where queerness is staple.

Documented by Diego Lynch


Artist Bios

Hamsa Nguyen (she/her) is a Vietnamese trans woman and interdisciplinary artist who is native to Los Angeles. She comes from a rich lineage of mystics and healers, and has integrated such identities into her work. Hamsa's poetry collection, Blood Frequency, has been recognized by the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network and C&R Publishing. She is currently pioneering herbalism and yoga education for queer and trans folks, while fashion modeling for nationwide brands.


Einar Escoto (he/him) is a Mindsei (Mind, Spiritual, Executive, Intuitive) Coach specializing in hypnotherapy techniques and psychic mediumship as a vehicle to help guide his clients towards their Soul healing. He received his MA in Women’s Studies from SDSU and BA from CSU, San Marcos double-majoring in Women’s Studies and Literature and Writing. His professional experience includes 10+ years in content management and production (including 3 years with celebrity life coach Tony Robbins), 14+ years in diversity, equity, and inclusion facilitation and strategy, and 12+ years in education as a higher-ed faculty, poetry workshop facilitator in San Diego juvenile halls and community schools, and as a Senior Manager in the Ed-tech space. Einar’s book about his gender transition, The Woman Inside of Me, released in Summer 2019.

Originally from Baltimore, Cat Gunn (they/them) is a transmasc nonbinary artist living and working in Southern California. Grappling with the intersection of an untold familial history and a queer personal history, Gunn extends a series of gestures of ancestral offerings, material investigations, and creative-fictional poetics that together contemplate endless possibilities across various temporalities. Gunn has had their work included in recent group exhibitions at ICA in San Diego, Vielmetter in Los Angeles, and BEST PRACTICE in San Diego among others. Gunn received their MFA in Visual Arts from UC San Diego, where they expanded their practice into the realms of ceramics, sculpture, and installation. They received their MA in Professional Studies (Art History Concentration) and BFA in Painting from Towson University

Facilitator Bio

Britt Pham (she/they) is a first-generation Vietnamese-Lao-American, a child of refugees, and a lover of all things disco. They design, produce, and facilitate experiences that weave the full spectrum of life - delight and nuance, joy and grief, the goofy and the real - to guide us closer to ourselves and our communities.