In Sacred Animal Sing-Along, Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn blends disciplines and media to explore Vietnamese American life, language, fertility, grief, and fatherhood. The exhibition features four narratives: A Vietnamese American Picture Dictionary (illustrations, coloring book), Still In Love (karaoke installation), Draw Me A Map (mural), and In Our Own Time (graphic novel, installation). Nguyễn invites viewers into emotionally complex terrain—yet circles back to moments of delight.
Sacred Animal Sing-Along was a solo exhibition at Stevenson University’s School of Design, Arts, and Communication, where Nguyen was the Artist-in-Residence in Spring 2026. Below, experience a virtual tour.
A Vietnamese American Picture Dictionary
This project is both a language tool and an exploration of the Vietnamese immigrant experience. Pages from the planned artist book are displayed as wall illustrations. Guests are invited to draw in and take home a coloring book version of the picture dictionary.
Still In Love: Karaoke Suite
Watch, listen, and sing along to a selection of karaoke videos. Visitors are also invited to draw and take home a coloring book.
Still In Love is the continuation of a project that debuted twenty years ago, when Nguyễn made a karaoke installation inspired by outreach work with Vietnamese American youth in Dorchester, Massachusetts. This installment catches up on their lives as adults. Songs and animations explore relationships, loss, and parenthood. Still In Love also references Paris By Night, a Vietnamese-language musical variety show that has had a lasting impact on Vietnamese American culture.
Draw Me A Map
One of my earliest memories is of the trip
we took to Florida when I was four years old.
We rode for two days on a Greyhound bus
and then entered a noisy house full of aunts.
That night, you leave me with them
while you go out with old friends.
Hours pass, night falls.
I cry inconsolably until finally, you return.
***
Once, I asked you to draw where you grew up.
From memory, you sketched a map
of your village in Bạc Liêu, Vietnam.
Near the bottom, left corner
is the electric plant, where Ông Cố,
Great-grandfather, was the chief mechanic.
The family lived there too,
right next to the engine room.
Somehow, you got used to the noise.
***
After we lost you,
in those early days of grief,
a panic overtakes me.
In that moment, I am a boy again,
waiting for you, and realizing
that you’re not coming back.
You never returned to
Bạc Liêu or Vietnam.
But Thaỏ and I hop on a plane,
and we bring along your map.
During your last days,
you tell me you dreamed of your father,
who you saw for the last time when
we left Vietnam in 1983.
In the dream, he gives you a toy.
I ask if this ever happened.
You say, “Never.”
Now I understand.
Sensing the end,
you longed to be reunited.
My father, a son again.
In Our Own Time
While waiting for your appointment, take a moment to browse the literature below.
In this graphic memoir, Nguyên and his wife journey through the ups and downs of infertility amid the pandemic. After several years of struggling to have a baby, they start fresh with IVF.