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Sep 6 - Designer Spotlight & Events
Kenny Nguyen: Adaptations at Mint Museum
mint museum uptown
Adaptation is defined as “the process in which a living thing changes slightly over time to be able to continue to exist in a particular environment.”
Kenny Nguyen feels this process materialized within himself, his lineage, and his methodology of making. Born and raised on a coconut grove in the Bến Tre province of Vietnam, the artist lived a quiet rural life and later moved to the States at the age of 19. This dispersion from his homeland mapped a new internal geography–a subtle double-consciousness that the artist works with– traversing the spiritual and physical, the contemporary and historical.
“After all this experimentation, what new work can I bring to the table? What new work should I create? It’s something that I look forward to, but in a strange way, it also becomes a limitation. There is always this process of learning. If I can push this material to its limit, maybe I could also push it in another direction.”
Thinking of himself as a hybrid, Nguyen merges his cultural traditions and the canon of abstract painting and fiber art in an innovative way. Also, in reverence of ancestors who endured histories of colonization and imperialism by the Chinese and French for hundreds to thousands of years, Nguyen’s work processes diasporic data and illuminates the shifting nature of place and identity as an ode to these transmutative legacies and an exploration of his own creative metamorphosis.
Nguyen’s training in fashion design and painting pair beautifully to realize his distinct practice–one that both deviates from and expands on tradition, one insistent on adapting to change to find beauty and break barriers.
Constellation CLT is an exhibition series designed to connect visitors to The Mint Museum with artists in our community, as well as activate the public spaces of the museum. The installations rotate three times per year and can be seen in five places at Mint Museum Uptown: at the foot of the atrium escalator; on the landings of the Mezzanine and Level 3; and in The Museum Store.