Conversations w/ Artist Evri Kwong: Turning National Issues into Bold Narrative Paintings

“I am not a political artist. I am just an artist responding to the time we are living in.” – Evri Kwong

Sebastopol Regional Library is honored to host exceptional artist Evri Kwong, who will talk about his lifelong passion turning national issues into bold narrative paintings to catalyze uncomfortable conversations. Topics that Kwong's art work engages with include the racist murder of Vincent Chin, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the 1867 Chinese railway workers’ strike. Join us Saturday, May 25 at 2pm in the forum room!

Biography & Achievements

Artist Evri Kwong was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he received a BFA and MFA in Drawing and Painting. During graduate school, Kwong was awarded a full fellowship to study at the prestigious Skowhegan School Of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant for Painting. Currently, he teaches at California College of the Arts in San Francisco as an adjunct professor in drawing and painting.

Kwong’s work is in numerous public and private institutions, most recently: de Young Museum in 2021, San Jose Museum of Art, Asian American Art Centre (NYC), The Lannan Foundation (Santa Fe, NM), Hana Bank in South Korea, Rene Di Rosa Preserve (Napa, CA), Ross School of Business (University of Michigan), Stanford University Hospital, Haggerty Museum, Djerassi Foundation, (Woodside, CA), deSaisset Museum (Santa Clara, CA).

His work has been written up in international magazines and newspapers and sighted in the book Asian American Primary Source Reader (2017, Yale Press) for a painting he made about Vincent Chin. He also appeared in the documentary film “Smitten” by filmmaker Nancy Kelly on the Rene Di Rosa Art Collection in Napa, CA.