Earth Cake (detail)
    Quyen Truong, 2005 
    Oil, marker and ink on muslin, 4x7 ft.

In the Earth Cake/Sun Cake tale, I focus on painting a family preparing to create the cakes together. The round rice cake, made with glutinous rice, represents the sun, and the square rice cake represents the earth. Earth cake is filled with mung beans and pork bits, wrapped with green banana leaves and bound with bamboo lacing. The story is ultimately about a son, Prince Lang Lieu, who cares so much for his father King Hung VI, he cannot conceive of giving him less than the earth and the sun. Lang Lieu achieves his goal symbolically with these cakes. In the end, Lang Lieu earns the love and admiration of his father, and thereafter, the Vietnamese people make Earth Cakes and Sun Cakes to celebrate the connection to the land and in honor of filial piety on New Years.

In the painting, I incorporate a childhood self portrait to show that these values have been deeply set in my mind since I was born. I also started to layer in suggestions of a cityscape, to talk about the convergence of two worlds, to suggest New Years in Times Square, and to indicate a sense of displacement.