OPEN SOURCE: Creative Arts Workshop x Ivy Vuong Exhibitions Reception!

Join us for a reception to celebrate Creative Arts Workshop and curator Ivy Vuong on their 2 shows on view at Creative Arts Workshop. Ivy Vuong is the curator for Artspace’s Open Source neighborhood platform at Creative Arts Workshop.

In the Main Gallery, Băng Qua Nước: Across Land, Across Water is an exhibition curated by Ivy Vuong (Yale ‘23) exploring how home(s) exist, twist, and meld across land and water for Vietnamese diasporic peoples through the works of Connecticut-based Vietnamese artists Thuan Vu, Antonius-Tín Bui, Quyên Trương, and Thu Tran. The word nước in Vietnamese can mean homeland, nation, or water. Water, via the Atlantic Ocean, gave passage to loss and new lives for thousands of Vietnamese ‘boat people’ escaping Vietnam post-1975 in the wake of the fall of Saigon––a displacement fraught with grief yet teeming with strength and resilience. This led to yearnings for new and old home(s), both tangible and intangible, emulated in this exhibition by paintings, cyanotypes, video, and soft sculpture divided into three sections: 1) Nơi Đây, Nơi Đó: Here nor/and There, 2) Cùng Nhau/Together, and 3) Sự Mất và Sự Trả Lại: Loss and Return/Redemption.

In our upstairs gallery, CAW has invited its esteemed roster of teaching artists in painting, drawing, printmaking, digital media, metalworking, fiber arts, book arts, photography and sculpture to participate in the exhibition, COMMON.  In daily life, common can mean something simple and unrefined or convey a sense of unity and harmony. This show highlights a group sharing a similar point of origin, at times intersecting and converging, playing off one another, moving toward new unexplored territory.