F E A T U R E D P U B L I C A T I O N S
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Textile Fine Art
Conversations with Artists Creating by Hand Author Helen Adams As artists from across the globe have pushed the boundaries of what is considered fine art, textiles have emerged as one the most vibrant and captivating areas of contemporary art. Tapestry, embroidery, quilting and a wide array of fibre arts are taking centre stage in galleries and exhibitions worldwide. From the immersive installations of Chiharu Shiota to the photorealist denim collages of Ian Berry, via the magical realist hand-embroidery of Chiachio and Giannone and painterly stitching of Alice Kettle, this lavish volume brings together over 50 living artists all creating stunning work by hand. |
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Fiber Art Now – Winter 2025
FEATURED ARTISTS: Sónia Aniceto | Eve Campbell | Warren King | Valeria Maldonado | Madison Nelson | Kenny Nguyen | Deirdre Pinnock | Karina Alexandra Rodriguez | Maris Van Vlack | Featured Artist Our cover artist Kenny Nguyen found his “voice” with his art. This innovative artist uses cutting, tearing, attaching, layering, and more to turn strips of painted silk into large, colorful, undulating works. Learn more about his techniques and his art in our feature “Deconstruction and Reconstruction.” |
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Art of the State
Celebrating the Visual Art of North Carolina By Liza Roberts Foreword by Lawrence J. Wheeler. Photographs by Lissa Gotwals. This beautiful and informative volume illustrates the vitality and importance of North Carolina's contemporary art scene, showcasing the creation, collection, and celebration of art in all its richness and diversity. Featuring profiles of individual artists, compelling interviews, and beautiful full-color photography, this book tells the story of the state's evolution through the lens of its art world and some of its most compelling figures. Liza Roberts introduces readers to painters, photographers, sculptors, and other artists who live and work in North Carolina and who contribute to its growing reputation in the visual arts. Roberts also provides fascinating historical context, such as the influence of Black Mountain College, the birth and growth of Penland School of Crafts, and short histories of North Carolina's art museums, including Charlotte's Mint Museum, Raleigh's North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem's Reynolda House, and those flourishing at universities. Artists featured include Stephen Hayes, Mel Chin, Cristina Cordova, Beverly McIver, and Scott Avett. The result is the most comprehensive, informative, and visually rich story of contemporary art in North Carolina. |
F E A T U R E D A R T I C L E S
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A Mirror In-Between
The Branch Museum's "Confluence" captures artist Kenny Nguyen’s experience as a member of the diaspora. By Gabriella Lacombe Published on Style Weekly, September 07, 2025 What does it mean to be a product of your environment? While our core identities may be concrete, our surroundings — and the changes that occur over our lifetime — undeniably shape who we are. For Vietnamese American artist Kenny Nguyen, that existential geography comes to life in the physical world through dozens of colorful, meticulously painted and sculpted strips of silk; work that will make up “Confluence,” the upcoming exhibition at The Branch Museum of Design. Raised in rural South Vietnam, Nguyen grew up surrounded by fruit trees, coconut plantations and the rivers of the Mekong Delta, which he observed flowing along their natural path and carving out the earth around them. Later, his environment would change dramatically when he moved to Ho Chi Minh City, pursuing a career in fashion. But perhaps the most transformative change of all came in his early 20s, when his family made another move to Charlotte, North Carolina. Read more... |
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Kenny Nguyen: The Divine Eye
Torn strips of silk reflect Caodaist temple architecture in this massive installation, inviting Halsey Institute visitors to engage with the history of Vietnam. By The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art Published on Hyperallergic, August 22, 2025 Kenny Nguyen: The Divine Eye is an evocative, large-scale installation that invites viewers to engage with the rich spiritual and cultural history of Vietnam through the lens of Caodaism. Rooted in the synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophies, Caodaism — a syncretic religion founded in Vietnam in the 1920s — serves as both inspiration and metaphor in this work, which is on view at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston in South Carolina through December 6. In his practice, Nguyen transforms torn strips of silk by dipping them into acrylic paint, layering them onto canvas, and hanging them dynamically on the wall to construct new topographies. Now for the first time, his technique has been adapted to form columns that reflect Caodaism’s distinctive temple architecture, marrying traditional Eastern elements with Western influences to create a visual dialogue between the past and the present, the local and the global. Read more... |
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How a Charlotte fiber artist entwines his Vietnamese heritage with his artwork
By Virginia Brown Published on The Charlotte Observer, August 24, 2025 One of the world’s busiest pedestrian corridors is now home to a massive artwork by a Charlotte artist. Kenny Nguyen, a Vietnamese American artist who works out of a Concord studio, recently unveiled an installation commissioned for the lobby of a bustling Times Square building. The work, part of Nguyen’s “Eruption” series, is his largest to date, and is 24 feet tall and 16 feet wide. It’s one of many examples of his fiber art, constructed by tediously manipulating hand-cut strips of painted silk into large-scale installed sculptures. Nguyen’s diverse style mirrors his own varied background. The 35-year-old Vietnamese native relocated to Charlotte with family in 2010. “When I was in Vietnam, I studied fashion design, so I always loved working in fabric and sculpture,” he said. “Making a dress is like making a sculpture around the body. So, when I got back into fine art, I trained in formal, abstract works, but I always try to incorporate different materials and go off the canvas.” The works’ crimplike undulation, which evokes a three-dimensional topographical landscape, is inspired by the water movement of the Mekong River of his native Vietnam. Read more... |
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Stop Over Charlotte: "I Have Enough Space Here to Be Creative"
Textile artist Kenny Nguyen grew up on a farm in South Vietnam and came to Charlotte, North Carolina, via Ho Chi Minh City. Here he got to know a completely different life – and made an unexpected career By Christoph Eisenschink Published on Lufthansa, August 29, 2025 The deeper you go into the South of the USA, not only does the dialect become broader, but the cities also become more sprawling. The apartments are bigger, the rents cheaper. More room for personal flourishing. That's what Kenny Nguyen appreciates about his adopted home of Charlotte. "I can afford a big studio here," says the artist with Vietnamese roots. "A place where I can be creative." Charlotte Attracts the Young, Creatives, and Art Enthusiasts Charlotte is growing rapidly. Many young and creative people are now also drawn to the largest city in the southern state of North Carolina. When Nguyen moved to Charlotte in 2010 from Ho Chi Minh City, a metropolis of six million people, the city seemed almost provincial to him. That has changed, but many residents still celebrate a kind of suburban life. "People come uptown to work or for social events in the evening," says Nguyen. "Otherwise, most people retreat into their private lives, enjoying the peace and quiet and their beautiful neighborhoods." Read more... |
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‘Hoa Tay (Flower Hands)’ Searches for Cultural Assimilation in New Orleans
This group show at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art offers a varied mix of artworks that at times capture the migrant experience but too often lapse disappointingly into nostalgia. By Leia Genis Published on Observer, July 17, 2025 In March, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art opened a group show commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. “Hoa Tay (Flower Hands): Southern Artists of the Vietnamese Diaspora”—a mini-survey of works by artists including Brandon Tho Harris, Christian Ðinh, Millian Pham Lien Giang, Đan Lynh Phạm, Kenny Nguyen, Lien Truon and Loc Huynh—considers complex themes like displacement and cultural identity and, as the exhibition text asserts, “these artists parse through the nuanced duality of their own unique Vietnamese-American experiences within the equally fraught history of the American South.” But while true to its description, the show comes short of grappling with that complex history, slipping instead into tenderheartedness for a place that is no longer home. Read more... |
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In a New York solo, diaspora artist Kenny Nguyen makes colour his language
Nguyen’s solo exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Mother Tongue, explores culture and memory through sculptural paintings. By Srishti Ojha Published on STIRworld, May 29, 2025 Mixed-media artist Kenny Nguyen’s vocabulary of colour is inextricable from his Vietnamese-American cultural identity. What viewers might identify as a soft, warm yellow is ‘màu lúa chín’, or the colour of ripened rice fields during the harvest season, while magenta is the colour of xôi, a Vietnamese sticky rice dish, steeped with coloured leaves. Each pigment in Nguyen’s palette is chosen carefully to evoke elements of his life and childhood living on a coconut farm near the Mekong Delta of Southern Vietnam. The colours are banded across dyed strips of silk, which are layered, attached and sanded into the undulating forms of Nguyen’s sculptural paintings. His solo exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York, titled Mother Tongue, explores language, connection and culture through colours—the cultural symbols they represent and the emotions they evoke. Read more... |
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Kenny Nguyen’s Beautiful Refusal
People of color are often called upon to perform their identities, but Nguyen’s lush tapestries largely avoid that trap. By Lisa Yin Zhang Published on Hyperallergic, May 20, 2025 In a world in which history and technology conspire to deliver a ceaseless stream of the most incomprehensible imagery this species has ever seen, Kenny Nguyen’s undulating tapestries feel like a miracle, offering a truly new visual experience through the most analog of means. They make the eyes swim in an experience I can only liken to the overwhelming output of the infinite algorithmic scroll, a Refik Anadol with a soul. Striated ribbons of color — sometimes hundreds in a single piece — ripple in glitched patchworks that only yield more when zoomed in upon: ribbons of silk, their edges frayed and unraveling in real time; endless recombinations of hue, shape, and thickness, speckled by human accident and continually reshaped by the shifting conditions of the space. Nguyen begins by laying out white silk so diaphanous that it billows with the slightest breeze before eventually succumbing to gravity. He makes small incisions into one end of the sheet with scissors before tearing it into strips. Each series employs a specific set and range of hues, and he mixes and pours those acrylic paints into streaks on a large palette. Read more... |
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10 must-see exhibitions at Singapore Gallery Month 2024, according to an art curator
Louis Ho, programme director of Singapore Gallery Month 2024, picks the 10 must-see exhibitions this September, from Japanese superstar Yayoi Kusama to Singapore’s own Ruben Pang By Louis Ho Published on Tatler, Sep 06, 2024 Eruption, a solo exhibition by Kenny Nguyen, at Sundaram Tagore Gallery Vietnamese-American artist Kenny Nguyen creates mixed-media paintings that are centred on ideas of cultural identity and displacement. He grew up on a coconut farm in rural Vietnam and relocated to the United States as an adult, turning to art as a coping mechanism for feelings of alienation and isolation. Drawing on his work with textiles, he produces sensuous, three-dimensional silk-based objects that he describes as “deconstructed paintings.” Read more... |
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Unfurling Charlotte Artist Kenny Nguyen’s Complex Silk Paintings
By Maile Pingel Published on Luxe Interiors + Design, September 4, 2024 There’s a certain magic unfolding in artist Kenny Nguyen’s North Carolina studio, ensconced in a 94-year-old former textile mill in Concord— a small town about 25 miles from Charlotte. Morning sun streams through its tall steel windows, illuminating exposed-brick walls and paint-splattered floors. The building’s former purpose is fitting for Nguyen’s creative output: vast, colorful paintings that employ silk as their basis. Following a childhood spent along the fertile plains of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, Nguyen moved to the country’s bustling Ho Chi Minh City to study fashion, ultimately immigrating to the United States as a young adult. In Charlotte, he studied fine art at the University of North Carolina, graduating in 2015. Canvas provides the backing material for Nguyen's more precious additions. Read more... |
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