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Quynh-Mai Nguyen

2020 Champions   |   San José, CA

Quynh-Mai Nguyen (she/her) is a 2nd generation Vietnamese-American social practice artist, poet, musician, and community organizer from San José, CA. For the past 10 years, Nguyen has been dedicated to working with underrepresented communities to help uplift their narratives through placemaking, events, and programming. In 2018, KQED Arts Bay Brilliant recognized Nguyen as one of 10 recognized movement builders for arts and culture in the Bay Area. Currently, Nguyen leads creative direction and community engagement with Arts Build Community, a women-led public art planning and consulting firm that brings artists’ perspectives to the development of cities, communities, and infrastructure. She is an alumni of San José State University and the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute.

Women Takeover

Women Takeover is a digital storytelling residency for, by, and about all women. The residency will host women artists and follow their journey of creating temporary artworks that commemorate past and present womens’ contributions to San José and Santa Clara County. I will use this grant to create a demonstration project showcasing the stories of several women through digital works of art. The project will be an opportunity to create awareness and engagement around Womanhood, a multi-year and arts-centered project, launched and supported by the County of Santa Clara Office of Women’s Policy, to promote equity and inclusion for women of all intersectional identities and from all economic, employment, and cultural backgrounds by highlighting their critical roles in the region. During the Womanhood project, artists will work with youth and historians to create temporary work that will be presented through an online archive. The Womanhood project will engage the community to identify key sites for renaming opportunities, commemorative public artworks, and women to recognize.