Hồng+Anh Nguyễn

I used to research as a student. Now I do it in the hours between a full-time job and the rest of my life.

Research is an art. A soft craft. A quiet ritual. Not the sterile kind you’re taught in school—full of rigid referencing and bibliographies in 11-point font—but the kind where you sit hunched over your desk at dusk, reading something half-relevant, and stumble upon a sentence that makes your stomach drop. That’s the magic part.

I had reserved cautiousness for his sense of self and he was quite careless with mine.

The best way to find your voice is to make a lot of work and then destroy it.

There was something really satisfying about seeing garbage come into my studio, and then seeing it go back out—as garbage. That’s how I learned to trust my gut. There are no talent scouts. You are totally on your own. No one cares if you fuck up, believe me.

I just put... See more

At times, even today, I see her ashamed, thawing. It only takes a baby misstep: caught from the wrong angle or tangled in bad feedback, cut with a tinge of criticism, pinned down by a thought of a mythical woman that once reigned my side of the bed, or broken by a bad day. She’s five, she’s thirteen, she’s twenty one, inadequate and alien, making a... See more

It is important to surround yourself with people who are better at stuff than you are. Never be the smartest person in the room. I never am.