In April of 1975, in exchange for being with my parents and sisters as a family unit evacuating out of Saigon, South Vietnam, I had to surrender my given name, my real birth date, and my original identity to comply with set requirements dictated by the United States government's overseas policy upon me, for I was uprooted and forced into self-erasure. In Amerikkka, I exist as a Vietnam War refugee directly legalized as an American citizen, but stigmatized as an alien. For two decades while functioning under the American system and contributing my youthful energy, work expertise and responsibility, I have experienced an escalated economic displacement, degradation and devaluation, anti-immigrant hostility, and racial discrimination from the patriarchal dominant structure that validates white Eurocentric morals and compulsive hetero-sexuality. The condition for living and working without being constantly oppressed and repressed has become increasingly urgent to my survival. My art works are created out of the necessity to assert my racial, political and sexual identities. The use of photography and written language is an attempt at developing a healthy self-concept, a non-binary gender but lesbian-defined revolutionary attitude. Whenever my art as knowledge becomes practice, my campaign for liberation and freedom becomes active rather than reactive. I fervently believe in the validity of female archaic concepts and sacred integrity. As an activist artist, I continue to construct Lesbian-specific imageries (sexual and non-sexual), and to explore metamorphic Asian identities; I am organizing my collaborative work to become even more brutally honest, more inflammatory when need be, and all the more blatant to bring about change. I personally believe that the future is to be re-shaped most likely by outlaw leadership -- by aware, autonomous beings -- many marginalized femmes who along with their brothers and sisters have formed revolutionary roots throughout North America. With this special exhibition, made possible by CEPA, I extend my profound gratitude to all the individuals who have been courageous in bringing to the viewing public the recent realities concerning Asians immigrants and Asian-American Feminist issues. I am also indebted to all my intimate female-to-female "multiples" -- my Asian Trans-gendered and Transsexual lovers, Vampire Dyke collaborators, hetero-bisexual Lesbian Separatists, including male-to-female ex-heteros.   -Hanh Thi Pham   Hanh Thi Pham is a widely exhibited artist. Her work is autobiographic and lesbian. Her photographs are included in public collections at the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan, California Museum of Photography, Laguna Art Museum, California State University at Riverside, University of California Los Angeles, and others. She was a Rockefeller Fellow with the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA in 1992-93, and is currently based in Southern California.