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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.
Today, as a working studio artist, he has participated in exhibitions around the world, including at the Sejong Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea, plus appearances in museums and galleries from Germany to the state of Georgia.
In 2024 the Mint Museum featured his exhibition, “Kenny Nguyen: Adaptations.” And last May, he opened a solo exhibition with Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood.
Kenny Nguyen, a Charlotte based fiber artist, prepares a canvas of paint to dip strips of silk into in his Concord studio.
From a coconut farm to the Queen City
Nguyen was born in the Ben Tre province and grew up on a coconut farm in the Mekong Delta, a fertile, roadless region characterized by its rivers and rich agriculture. Growing up, Nguyen traveled everywhere by boat.
In 2010 he moved with his family to Charlotte, after a decade-long waiting period for visa approval. He was 19. His family had moved to be close to Nguyen’s uncle, who had settled in the area before Nguyen was born following the end of the Vietnam War.
“Everything was so different, it was a shock for me,” Nguyen said. Adapting to a new country, where he barely spoke the language, quickly led to feelings of isolation and loneliness. “For the first five to seven years, I imagined myself at home in Vietnam.”
To cope, he called on his creativity, and he hungered for higher education. “Going to school was a really big dream,” Nguyen said. “If I got to go to school, I wanted to go for fine art.” His family lived near UNC Charlotte. “They had an art program, and it was a beautiful campus.”
Pursuing his fine art degree positioned him well for his role today as a full-time studio artist. “I got a lot of support from my professors,” he said.
Kenny Nguyen pays homage to his Vietnamese heritage in his fibert art created in Concord.
Susan Brenner, his painting instructor, pushed him. “My struggle was, I couldn’t really talk about my work. Especially with the second-language speaking, it was even harder for me. Every time I had a critique in class, she called me to stand in front of the class and talk about my work,” Nguyen said. “Being put on the spot made me want to just get over it. That kind of practice gave me confidence.”
An art history class also stood out.
“We studied contemporary African art, which gave me a lot of inspiration, especially the diaspora artists who were making work related to cultural history and putting it on the contemporary art market,” Nguyen said.
“That gave me the idea that using your different background in your art is something very unique, your personal history. That really opened the door for me to think about this as a professional career.”
Vera Falkner, one of Kenny Nguyen’s assistants and a student at UNC Charlotte, weaves strips of silk dipped in paint around a plaster column.
A thriving teaching studio
In 2015 he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from UNC Charlotte and established his own studio in a shed behind his parents’ house. In 2018, he purchased a home and created a studio in his garage, then moved the studio to historic Cannon Mill in Concord in 2022.
After moving in, he learned about the rich history of the former textile mill.
“They made the bedsheets and towels for the military during World War II, and you can see some evidence of it — on the walls, the cracks on the floor where they moved the textile machines …” he said. “It’s very interesting. Being there, with the history of the building, I feel inspired and it influences a lot of my work.”
With commissions and shows piling up, in 2023 he decided that he needed help. He contacted a former professor at UNC Charlotte to see if the school had any students who could intern during the summer.
Mia Nguyen, one of Kenny Nguyen’s assistants and a graduate of UNC Charlotte, weaves strips of silk dipped in paint around a plaster column in the Concord studio.
“My career has gotten to a point where I can’t do everything by myself anymore,” Nguyen said. “It’s processing-based. I have to cut silk into one-inch strips, so it’s very time-consuming.”
His paid interns help him tear silk and mix paint colors, and he teaches them the business side of art. “They need to know how to make a show happen, how to work with a gallery, where to show,” Nguyen said. “I feel like this is a good way for them to understand the work we have to put in to have a successful career.”
He also invites them to installations and openings of his shows.
“They get their hands on a lot of things,” Nguyen said. “I love working in the studio so much, moving around and making works, so I enjoy being hands-on and teaching at the same time.”
Kenny Nguyen dips strips of silk into layers of paint before laying them on top of each other on a canvas in his Concord studio, part of a former textile mill.
Drawing on his roots
Nguyen remains busy.
Through September, his work is on view in “Hoa Tay” (“Flower Hands”) at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. The exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and showcases work by Southern artists from the Vietnamese diaspora.
On Sept. 10, another solo show, “Confluence,” will open at the Branch Museum of Design in Richmond, Virginia.
And last month, research for another show took Nguyen back to Vietnam. The show explores Vietnamese culture through Caodaism, a religion that Nguyen’s grandmother practiced. It will run through Dec. 6.
“When I moved (to Charlotte), both of my grandmothers passed away, and I didn’t get a chance to see them,” he said. “That is something that I always keep in my memory. I keep thinking about that. And, in talking a lot about identity, I feel like this is a part of my origin that I don’t ever touch base on.”
He spent two weeks visiting small towns of south Vietnam and studying the architecture of the Caodai temple, namely Holy See in Tây Ninh province.
“The installation is going to have some free-hanging sculptures that take the form of the columns that I saw in the temples. They hang down from the ceiling,” he said.
The exhibition, The Divine Eye, opens Aug. 22 at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston. In the process, he discovered the work of Janet Hoskins, a University of Southern California professor of anthropology and religion, who has written about Caodaism in Vietnam. She will give an accompanying lecture on Oct. 6 at the Halsey.
“My career has gotten to a point where I can’t do everything by myself anymore,” Kenny Nguyen said. That’s where interns from UNC Charlotte come in.
Nguyen also found inspiration from the vivid decorations inside the temples. “One of the altars had the symbol of the Divine Eye, the God,” he said.
“They borrow the architecture from Buddhism, like the temple, and they borrow a little bit from Christianity, like a church, so the architecture combines different architectures across all other regions to make it really special. I can relate that to my personal history, a combination of different cultures.”
More on Kenny Nguyen
To learn more and follow Nguyen’s work, visit kennynguyen.org
In his Concord studio, Kenny Nguyen says he enjoys being hands-on with his art as well as teaching his interns.
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