Jean-Baptiste Phou in Person, Fall 2026
Artist in residence, Film, Readings, Residency, Talk, Workshop
Fall 2026
Discover the work of Villa Albertine’s current artist in residence: Jean-Baptiste Phou, a multi-disciplinary artist and writer now in California to begin research for a collective book bringing together voices from the Cambodian diaspora.
Through research and encounters with Cambodian communities across the Bay Area, the Central Valley, and Southern California, he will explore individual and collective paths of repair: What is passed down through experiences of war and exile, and what can be transformed across generations?
View the events below to hear more about his progress, hear from his collaborative partners, and engage with the topics at the core of this project.
City Lights Bookstore
Thursday, October 8th
7:00 pm
In his memoir, Coming Out of My Skin, published in English by Seagull Books in 2023, Jean-Baptiste Phou examines the role his ethnic origin has played in the construction of his sexual identity and his romantic relationships in a predominantly white environment. Phou explores how perceptions of his body have shaped his relationship with himself and others. How does a marginalized person develop emotionally and build, reclaim, and express their sexuality? Drawing on various works of history, sociology, gender studies, literature, and popular culture, Phou sensitively examines various strategies developed in response to this question.
Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, PhD, is a writer and scholar whose work bridges creative expression and social justice. She is the co-editor of “The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora.” As a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, her work centers on Vietnamese American literature and the arts, with a focus on gender. She is also the Co-Executive Director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN).
Film Screening and Writing Workshop
Vendredi, 9 octobre
Friday, October 9
Alliance Française Silicon Valley
Programmation en franças – Program hosted in French only
À la suite de la projection du film La Langue de ma mère de J. B. Phou, qui raconte la relation complexe entre une mère et son fils ne partageant pas la même langue, cet atelier propose un temps de rencontre, de réflexion et de création avec l’auteur.
À partir des impressions et des émotions suscitées par le film, l’atelier invitera les participants à explorer par l’écriture les thèmes de la langue, de la transmission, de la mémoire, de l’identité et de l’exil. Chacun pourra composer un court texte ou un message vocal adressé à une personne réelle ou imaginaire, qui pourra être partagé en fin d’atelier.
Aucune expérience préalable d’écriture n’est nécessaire.
L’atelier se déroulera en français et s’adresse aux apprenants de niveau intermédiaire à avancé, ainsi qu’aux francophones et francophiles.
Registration information to come soon.
Saturday, October 10
Samedi le 10 octobre
Palo Alto Art Center
9:30 – 11:30am
Programmation en franças – Program hosted in French only
The program will include a reading-performance based on Coming Out of My Skin, his autobiographical work on race, sexuality, family, and growing up as a gay Asian man in France, as well as an excerpt from My Mother’s Tongue, a film about his relationship with his mother and questions of transmission across generations and languages.
In this talk, he will reflect on the complex relationship between belonging, identity, and one’s relationship with one’s own culture, drawing from his personal journey between France and Cambodia.
Several copies of Jean-Baptiste’s work are available for pre-order and can be picked up at the event during the book signing by the author.
The conference is open to anyone interested in identity, culture, diaspora, and multilingualism. It is presented in partnership with Villa Albertine – Consulate General of France in San Francisco, Alliance Française of Silicon Valley, the American Association of Teachers of French (Northern California), and the Stanford World Language Project.
Light refreshments will be available before the talk.
Register here.
Saturday, October 17
7:00 – 8:30pm
Telegraph Hill Books, San Francisco
Having grown up as a Cambodian immigrant in France, Jean-Baptiste Phou has long explored the challenges and contradictions of the Asian diaspora experience throughout his artistic career. In his memoir, Coming Out of My Skin, the artist shifts his focus to examining the role his ethnic origin has played in the construction of his sexual identity and his romantic relationships in a predominantly white environment. Phou asks: how does a marginalized person develop emotionally and build, reclaim, and express their sexuality? How does this inform the experience of a queer Asian person navigating predominantly white cultural spaces?
César Cadabes is a Hawaii-born and raised, Queer Filipino American writer and solo performance artist based in San Francisco. He’s the Artistic Director of GLBTQ Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) Theatre, an intergenerational theater collective, where he mentors Queer and Trans Asian and Pacific Islander artists in amplifying stories rooted in lived experience. His acclaimed solo show, Not My First Pandemic, won Best One-Man Show and the All About Solo Critics’ Award at the United Solo Festival in 2021. A three-time San Francisco Arts Commission grant recipient, César practices cultural strategy- shifting national narratives, mobilizing artist-activists, and advancing social justice. His current projects include a new solo work, Aging, Cancer, and Fascism, interweaving personal narrative with the body as archive, community care, and resistance, and the GAPA History Project, marking and celebrating 40 years of QTAPI community building in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Together, the pair will discuss the intersection of diasporic Asian identity, sexuality, and how they have influenced the development of the speakers.
Register here Jean-Baptiste Phou: Coming Out of My Skin Tickets, Saturday, October 17 • 7 PM – 8:30 PM | Eventbrite
In partnership with
Litquake
Litquake’s diverse live programs aim to inspire critical engagement with the key issues of the day, bring people together around the common humanity encapsulated in literature, and perpetuate a sense of literary community by providing a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing. Because we believe in literature as a public good, we work to produce events that are accessible to all.
City Lights
The City Lights Foundation fosters an active engagement with books and literary culture. Our public events, publishing program, and educational outreach are dedicated to sustaining a vibrant community of readers, writers, and independent thinkers
Founded in 1953 by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, City Lights is an independent bookstore and“Literary Landmark” with a legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and unconstrained intellectual curiosity.
The nation’s first all-paperback bookstore, City Lights offers three floors of both new-release hardcovers and quality paperbacks from all of the major publishing houses, along with an impressive range of titles from smaller, harder-to-find, specialty publishers. The store features an extensive and in-depth selection of poetry, fiction, translations, politics, history, philosophy, spirituality, music, film, cultural studies, and more.
Alliance Française Silicon Valley
Alliance Française Silicon Valley (AF Silicon Valley) is a non-profit organization and the official center for French language and culture in Silicon Valley. Its mission is to promote and enhance the knowledge and appreciation of French and francophone cultures and language, and to encourage interaction among French, Francophone, and American people through programs in education and the arts.
Since 1970, AF Silicon Valley has offered French language classes for all ages and levels as well as cultural events, a library, two book clubs, and celebrations of French holidays. Our main office, foyer, and library are located in Los Gatos center; to better accommodate peninsula locations, we also offer classes and events in Palo Alto.
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