Artist Directory

Boone Nguyen

Headshot of Boone Nguyen as a reflection with trees and buildings behind him.

Boone Nguyen is a photographer, installation artist, and curator of film and visual and performing arts. His current work explores how cultural practices and natural forces reclaim and transform places that have been subjected to economic, political, and environmental devastation. Focused on how villagers honor their dead and repurpose bomb craters, Đất Nước (2016), Boone's multimedia installation at Indigo Bleu Gallery in Philadelphia, explored villagers' relationship to land and place in Vietnam's Mekong Delta region. He was a producer for Bryan Green's The Philadelphia Bicycle Vignette Story, which premiered at the 6th Annual BlackStar Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Narrative Short. He is currently working on a project about migration and placemaking commissioned by the Asian Arts Initiative, with original funding from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia. The multimedia project will premiere in May 2018 and is a part of Asian Arts Initiative's (ex)CHANGE: History, Place, Presence project. 

Boone Nguyen was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam and lived in Saigon until the age of seven, when his family resettled as refugees in South Philadelphia. Over the years, he held key positions at Scribe Video Center, Frameline, and Asian Arts Initiative. A short report on Boone's work recently aired on PBS member station WHYY-TV as part of its broadcast of Ken Burns' The Vietnam War. He earned an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego, where he was a Cota Robles Fellow, and a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University.