Dr. Khanh Ho

Hometown: Saigon, Vietnam 

Artistry: Rheumatologist, mixed media artist

Online: @thekhanhartist21 on Instagram

When a patient has been in and out of the hospital for months, and still no one can figure out why she’s sick, Dr. Khanh Ho gets the call. Like a medical detective, the rheumatologist sleuths her way through the clues of disparate symptoms to find the solution and restore life where once it was fading fast.

“It’s the same thing when you talk about inspiration,” Ho says, tapping her vibrantly sneakered feet under the tree shade of her Garden District courtyard. “I’m able to pull and make connections from experiences that nobody else sees. So a lot of my art is just putting those clues together on canvas.”

These creative clues didn’t become an artistic process until Ho truly found her voice—in her late 40s. It was then, thanks to a Mexico retreat with singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier, that her creativity began earnestly- and exactly where her story did, back in Vietnam.

A Refugee’s Origin, her own Odyssey, and the lifelong creative’s first official collection of mixed media art feels like an epic hero’s journey in fever dream clothing, a surreal and evocative invitation into her ever curious and constantly clashing worlds of violent danger, colonialist exploitation and spiritual search.

After her father’s passing in 2023, Ho decided to visit Vietnam for the first time since she was an infant, carried aboard an escaping plane while under attack from the Vietcong. She landed on her birthday.

“I felt like I found a piece of myself that I never knew was missing, and it healed parts of me that I didn’t even know had been harmed,” Ho says of the trip. “I’m convinced it healed my relationship with my mother. She was the hardest person on me growing up. But, see, she was fraught with PTSD. It wasn’t about me.”

Whether using cleverly collaged Nixon and Jane Fonda propaganda, her technicolor, Picasso-esque renderings of rubber and Bodhi trees, or threads of Buddhist wisdom, memories are her medium. And despite the deeper themes, there’s always a playfulness in her work.

“Just don’t judge yourself and what you make,” Ho says. “Art can be everything and anything you want it to be. And your art is for you.”