Writers Who Teach, Teachers Who Write
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COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Topography of Memory, 2019 (hand-cut silk fabric, acrylic paint, threaded and mounted on canvas, 70x98x10) by Kenny Nguyen
If you were quartered by grief, I was halved. Not that my grief could master yours But so that I could fit into you, Make us more than what we were. There’s broken beauty this time of year When the freeze brittles the world And we have time to bitter our taste. From all this, I have learned a new proverb: Memory is a fire, I want to tell you. An army come to tear down city walls, To found new countries of the heart, So our mild citizenry can learn riot And cultivate fields of wild flame.
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.
