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Among the colors, haunting memories of 'Secret War'

There are Buddhist "offering trees" made of pastel paper and golden foil. There are photos of saffron-robed monks, a woman in a lime-green Lao tube skirt, and South Philadelphia's Maethu Dee ("Grandma Dee"), wearing a floral-print shirt and clutching her walking stick.

Catzie Vilayphonh, a spoken-word poet, was born in a camp for Lao refugees. She was an infant when her family resettled in Philadelphia in 1981. (JEFF FUSCO / For the Inquirer)
Catzie Vilayphonh, a spoken-word poet, was born in a camp for Lao refugees. She was an infant when her family resettled in Philadelphia in 1981. (JEFF FUSCO / For the Inquirer)Read more

There are Buddhist "offering trees" made of pastel paper and golden foil.

There are photos of saffron-robed monks, a woman in a lime-green Lao tube skirt, and South Philadelphia's Maethu Dee ("Grandma Dee"), wearing a floral-print shirt and clutching her walking stick.

The installation at Asian Arts Initiative, a community center on the edge of Philadelphia's Chinatown, abounds with bright colors.

Visitors generally take a little longer to notice the orange dots randomly arrayed on the gallery's floor - and by then they have been figuratively blown to bits because each dot underfoot symbolizes a cluster bomb.

The exhibit is a visceral lesson in how America's war in Vietnam crept into neighboring Laos and other parts of Southeast Asia.

"From 1964 to 1973 the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of bombs on Laos - equal to a planeload every eight minutes," reads the plaque that explains the dots and introduces nine drawings by survivors of the bombardments.

The framed, pen-and-ink sketches depict plunging planes and stick-figure villagers missing limbs.

"All of the pieces come with stories as compelling as the art itself," said curator Catzie Vilayphonh.

"You may look and say, 'This is cool,' " she said, describing "Voices From Four Decades of the Lao Diaspora," her show on display at Asian Arts through May 1.

"Then you read the accompanying story," she said, "and realize it was key evidence at a congressional hearing" on U.S. aid to help clear the unexploded ordnance.

In what came to be called America's "Secret War," the United States bombed the Vietcong resupply routes inside Laos, covertly supported the royal Lao government against the Communist Pathet Lao, and displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians into refugee camps. Decades later, some settled in the United States.

In 1990, the U.S. census counted 878 Laotian refugees in Philadelphia. Now, according to the State Department, 3,268 Laotians live here. The U.S. total is about 250,000.

Vilayphonh said her mission is to project a spotlight on a community with a lower profile than the better-known refugees of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Shira Walinsky, a Philadelphia muralist who helped mount the show, understands.

"Laos," she said, "has stories that need to be told and heard, too."

At the show's opening in March, guests were blessed by a Buddhist monk. They grazed at the buffet table. They stepped closer for a better look at the brushstrokes of painter Chantala Kommanivanh. Some were transfixed by the exhibit on the unexploded ordnance, known as UXOs.

An estimated 80 million bombs still litter Laos and have killed or maimed 20,000 people since the last one fell, according to the nonprofit group Legacies of War, which lent the pen-and-ink drawings to Voices and has been instrumental in promoting bomb clearance.

Vilayphonh, 34, a spoken-word poet, was born in a camp for Lao refugees. She was an infant when her family resettled in Philadelphia in 1981. She graduated from Central High School in 1998 and a few years later, with her stage partner, Michelle Myers, a Korean American, achieved acclaim with their in-your-face poetry performances as  Yellow Rage . The duo toured colleges and were featured on HBO.

In 2012, Vilayphonh created Laos in the House, an arts festival that takes its name from one of her poems and strives to spotlight her heritage.

Traumatized by their uprooting 40 years ago, her parents rarely spoke of the past.

As Vilayphonh began to squeeze out some of the details, she said, she felt compelled to showcase her Lao culture more widely. Supported by a $25,000 Knight Foundation Challenge Arts Grant, she curated and installed the Voices show.

But the gallery exhibition is just the half of it, she said.

On May 1, the night the exhibition closes, the performance component begins, involving Lao dancers, musicians, poets, and a theater collective from Los Angeles called Refugee Nation. They will perform on a stage at Asian Arts.

The following night a different program by Lao performers is scheduled to take place at the Jewish American History Museum on Independence Mall.

"There is something familiar about the Lao and Jewish diaspora experiences," said Vilayphonh, "beautiful cultures, with some horrible moments in their histories."