Ocean Vuong’s First Photography Exhibition Opens at CPW in Kingston

Ocean Vuong has all the time written as if language had been one thing fragile you maintain as much as the sunshine. His strains pause, hear, double again. They are alert to what survives, and what doesn’t. With his first public exhibition of pictures, opening January 31 at CPW in Kingston, Vuong brings that very same attentiveness into a visible register.

Readers of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous or Time Is a Mother will acknowledge the emotional climate of those pictures instantly. Vuong’s photographs linger in fluorescent-pink nail salons, modest home interiors, and different unremarked areas of immigrant and working-class life. They should not documentary within the conventional sense. Nothing is defined. Nothing is staged for emphasis. Instead, the images function the way in which his sentences do—quietly and obliquely.

At the middle of the exhibition is a physique of pictures of Vuong’s youthful brother, made within the aftermath of their mom’s demise. The photographs hint a interval of care, grief, and tentative renewal, however they very a lot resist sentimentality. Vuong doesn’t aestheticize loss a lot as sit with it, permitting the digicam to register the small, human negotiations of residing on. In this manner, the work echoes the ethical seriousness of his writing: survival as an ongoing apply, not a victory parade.

Vuong has spoken about utilizing pictures as a part of his writing course of—one other approach of seeing when phrases falter. That sensibility is clear right here. These pictures really feel like notes taken in a unique key, attentive to gesture, gentle, and proximity. A limited-edition artist’s book, co-published by CPW and 1080PRESS, brings his photographs and textual content into direct dialog, underscoring how porous the boundary between them has all the time been.

For an artist so carefully related to language, this exhibition provides a revealing shift in perspective. Vuong isn’t abandoning phrases. He’s listening to what stays when he units them down. “Ocean Voung: Song” shall be on exhibit via May 10. An opening reception shall be held on January 31 from 5-8pm.

This article seems in January 2026.

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