KV Duong was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 1980. He emigrated to Toronto, Canada with his family in 1987 and moved to London, UK on his own in 2010. His art practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, and live performance. In 2022, KV had a solo exhibition titled ‘Too Foreign for Home, Too Foreign for Here’ at the Migration Museum in London, followed by ‘No Place Like Home’ at the Museum of the Home in 2023, a group exhibition of eight artists from the Vietnamese Diaspora that KV co-curated and artistically led.
Originally trained as a structural engineer, KV enrolled in the MA in Painting Programme at the Royal College of Art, London, in September 2023 to further push his artistic investigations and was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship from Royal College of Art in 2024. He is presently exploring latex as a painting medium.
Gabriella Kardos: You’ve always been fascinated by material exploration, experimenting with concrete, fibreglass, and polystyrene in the past. Why did you turn your attention to latex?
KV Duong: Latex holds a complex web of connotations deeply rooted in the historical dynamics of rubber plantations during the era of French colonisation in Vietnam, where I was born. Latex also embodies a queer individual’s experience, evoking sexual fantasies and intimacy. Laden with symbolism, I’m using this glue-like substance to act as a signifier and protagonist, fusing together materials of importance in my life to help shape and contextualise my identity and ancestral past.