About me

Born and raised in San Francisco, Vivian Tong (she/her) is an artist, public historian, and grandchild of a Chinese paper son.

Her figurative work draws from traditions of surrealism, early 20th century illustration, and urban legends to explore traumatic body memory, depersonalization, and the struggle for identity and meaning.

Though meticulous, neurotic mark-making, her figures echo the fracture of identity required to play into a system, or exist outside it. These figures are her marginalia - existing wearily but defiantly in structures that seek to define and consume them.