HARTFORD, CONN.- An exhibition of 44 works of photography by award-winning author, professor, and poet, Ocean Vuong, opened this summer at The Wadsworth in downtown Hartford. I’m Sorry I Love You features portraits, landscapes, and snapshots documenting queer and immigrant life in the Connecticut River Valley over two decades.

Born in Vietnam and raised in the Hartford area, Vuong’s photographic work captures intimate flashes of life with tender awareness that fans of his writing will recognize.

“With this series, I want to enact a communal autobiography, not just of immigrant life in the Connecticut River Valley, but also of queer experience around rurality and the working class. What happens when we no longer measure success by one's ability to escape? What kind of life; that is, what kind of joys, triumphs, and sorrows might be inhabited for those who stay and forge dignified living where they are? I don't want to speak for any singular community with my work—but if those who come from marginal spaces can see themselves in the temporality, historicity, and discovered mythos of daily life, I feel these images would be truly realized,” said Ocean Vuong.

The City of Hartford’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Entertainment was instrumental in bringing Ocean Vuong to The Wadsworth, which had long hoped to welcome the artist to its galleries.

“I am thrilled that Ocean Vuong’s work will be on display at The Wadsworth, the oldest public art museum in the United States. It is wonderful for an internationally acclaimed artist like Vuong to return to his roots and display his pieces here in Hartford, where we believe that art should be accessible to everyone. I invite members of our community to visit the Wadsworth — free for Hartford residents!” said Mayor Arunan Arulampalam.





Vuong’s exhibition is the latest iteration in the renowned MATRIX contemporary art series spotlighting work by emerging talents. For the past fifty years MATRIX has featured over 1,000 works of art by nearly 200 artists and served as the model for many similar programs since.

Many distinguished artists — Richard Tuttle, Neil Jenney, Jon Borofsky, Daniel Buren, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Nancy Spero, Louise Lawler, Barbara Kruger, Gerhard Richter, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Glenn Ligon among them — were featured in MATRIX shows as their first solo museum exhibitions in the United States, on the cusp of what became successful international careers.

“While Ocean is well-known as a great writer, many will be excited to learn that he is also an accomplished photographer, with a vision that resonates with his literary works,” said Danielle Drees, Marsted Curatorial Fellow for Contemporary Art at The Wadsworth.

Ocean Vuong is best known for his critically acclaimed debut novel and New York Times bestseller, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, winner of the American Book Award, The Mark Twain Award, and the New England Book Award.

Vuong was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the “Genius Grant”) in 2019 and was nominated for a National Book Award in the same year. As in his works of literature, Vuong’s photography is infused with themes of trauma, family history, and the immigrant experience.

Selected by Time magazine as one of its 100 Rising Cultural Influencers, Vuong's writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Granta, Harpers, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working-class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he was educated at nearby Manchester Community College before transferring to Pace University to study International Marketing. Without completing his first term, he dropped out and enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he graduated with a BA in Nineteenth Century American Literature. He subsequently received his MFA in Poetry from NYU.

He currently splits his time between Western Massachusetts and New York City, where he serves as a Professor in Modern Poetry and Poetics in the MFA Program at NYU.