North Carolina Miscellany
N C L R ONLINE
197
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Tradition Transformed (acryllic, oil, watercolor, ink on canvas, paper, 48x48) by Kenny Nguyen
with lack, with utter wanting for home and the fist-sized yellow mangos, though I (American!) prefer the red-green ones the weight of an unwell heart which is not the metaphor for mangos you wanted right, you’re used to small, gentle breasts, juicy for your mouths or some shit, but advice about mango consumption: they’re plucked raw, inedible, and turn against you while you sleep, to mush and mangle.
KENNY NGUYEN was born and raised in South Vietnam. He earned a BFA in Fashion Design from Vietnam National University of Art and Architecture and was an assistant fashion designer in Ho Chi Minh City before moving to the US in 2010. He lives in Charlotte, NC, where he earned a BFA in painting at UNC Charlotte. His works have been exhibited at Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Katzen Arts Center at the American University, and the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, among others. In 2016, Nguyen received an Excellence Award in the Asia Contemporary Young Artist Award exhibition from Sejong Museum of Art. He has been awarded artist residency fellowships, and he is the recipient of a 2019 Charlotte Regional Artist Project Grant and the 2019 Denis Diderot A-i-R Grant. See more of his art on his website.