PHOTO CREDIT Mel Taing
(300 words)
Short Bio
(120 words)
Curriculum Vitae
Contact
Often taking shape as room-scale installations, their interdisciplinary work comprises painting, sculpture, video, fiber, writing, and ephemera. Their research is autoethnographic and informed by decolonial methodologies at the interstices of affect and trauma theory, critical refugee studies, queer of color critique, cosmopolitanism, and vernacular Buddhism. Their research inquiry reframes how we might view queer/Asian/diaspora within multiple entangled intellectual genealogies, political formations, and relational socialities.
Sam has exhibited their work nationally and internationally in museums, galleries, and artist-run spaces including Kalm Village (Chiang Mai, Thailand), Minnesota Museum of American Art (St. Paul, MN), Grace and Clark Fyfe Gallery (Glasgow, UK), Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Ely Center of Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT), and A.P.E. Gallery (Northampton, MA), among others.
They are a forthcoming Hermitage Fellow (2027) and have received support for their practice through Artadia (Boston, 2025), Mass Cultural Council (2026), and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program (Thailand, 2022–23). They have been an artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), Sâmleng (Phnom Penh, Cambodia), and Chautauqua School of Art (Chautauqua, NY).
Sam holds an MFA from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.
Sam’s family arrived in the US in 1992 as sponsored refugees. They grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, attended Lowell Public Schools, and is the second-youngest of nine siblings. Their paternal grandmother was indigenous Khmer Krom (người Khmer Nam Bộ).
(updated August 2026)