Meet Kiara Nguyen of Artistas de Color Unidos

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kiara Nguyen.

Kiara, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My freshman year of college, I wrote a piece called “a poem for the fallen ones.” It was a multimedia work with poetry and a piano piece that was composed by a close friend of mine. The piece itself was a culmination of my feelings of anger, hurt, and sadness over the constant news media of school shootings and our government doing nothing about it. I performed the piece for a final project in a freshman seminar class. My professor came up to me the next month and suggested that I submit it somewhere. So, while looking, I realized that I couldn’t really find any websites to submit multimedia artwork. So I decided to create my own site.

Throughout my process of birthing this idea, this little baby, I came to the conclusion that I needed to do more. Many literary and artistic spaces are often dominated by white artists or White perspectives. I wanted to create a space where people of color would feel comfortable sharing their stories and could find an accepting community of people who may share similar experiences. In July of 2019, I officially launched the Artistas de Color Unidos (English translation: Artists of Color United) website, an online multimedia arts gallery for artists of color.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
We’ve only been around for about a year and three months, so there hasn’t really been too many struggles. However, I am also a full-time college student and primarily run 90-95% of ADCU’s processes—the website editing, creating, the social media posts, the newsletters, etc. So I think just trying to balance managing this along with school and my part-time job has been difficult, but it’s more of just a personal challenge for me. But I’m really looking forward to all that I know we’ll accomplish.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Artistas de Color Unidos serves as a multimedia art gallery that aims to empower and uplift artists of color. We take pride in being able to highlight and showcase many different artists of color from across the world and being able to highlight those with all sorts of talents. We accept all forms of art whether it’s writing, painting, dancing, singing, film, and so on. We also proudly present ourselves as one of the few sites that offer the option to submit multimedia artwork.

What were you like growing up?
I definitely just went to go ask my mom what I was like growing up haha. But, on a more serious note, I was very creative as a kid. I started writing songs at the age of four, and I think I got into creative writing at around age 7? I participated in the afterschool program plays throughout all of elementary school, and then another in the sixth grade. I started writing poetry in the eighth grade, and I have been writing it ever since.

Personality-wise, I would say I was pretty introverted. I read a lot, and I was considered to be somewhat of a teacher’s pet.

Pricing:

• Our “I Am Not Your Fetish” t-shirts are both $15 each.
• We sell many stickers on our website for about $3 each, and currently have an ongoing Black Lives Matter sale going on where if you order our specific BLM bundle pack, all of the proceeds will go towards an organization that fights for Black lives.
• Shopping for the holidays? Use our code ‘HOLIDAY10’ for 10% off our “I Am Not Your Fetish” line! Sale ends December 25th, 2020.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.adcunidos.com
• Email: info@adcunidos.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adcunidosx/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adcunidosx
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/adcunidosx

Image Credit:
Karina Diaz

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