CFGNY
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CFGNY (Concept Foreign Garments New York) is a New York–based artist collective and fashion project founded in 2016 by Tin Nguyen and Daniel Chew, later joined by Kirsten Kilponen and Ten Izu.[1][2] Working across clothing, video, sculpture, installation, and performance, the group examines racialization and diasporic identity through what they call the “vaguely Asian” lens—an elastic, relational framing that resists fixed notions of Asian or Asian-American authenticity.[3] CFGNY has presented runway-style performances and exhibitions at institutions including Japan Society (New York), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Auto Italia (London), and the X Museum (Beijing), and has been profiled and reviewed by major art and fashion media.[4][5][6]
Early history and membership
[edit]Nguyen (painting/sculpture) and Chew (film) met in New York’s downtown art scene and launched CFGNY in 2016 as an art–fashion platform to interrogate race, sexuality, and community within predominantly white cultural industries. Kilponen and Izu joined in 2020, expanding the collective’s multimedia practice.[7]
Work
[edit]CFGNY describes themselves as “artists who make clothes,” using garments as research objects alongside video, sculpture, and installation. The group’s key concept—“vaguely Asian”—names a shared experience of being perceived as Asian rather than a claim to essential identity; their work often stages mistranslation, bootleg logics, and porous authorship across global supply chains.[8] Critics have linked the practice to debates over identity and luxury, noting the way CFGNY deranges received ideas of “East/West” style and authenticity.[9] CFGNY’s process frequently involves collaboration with tailors in Ho Chi Minh City and casting intergenerational Asian creative communities for shows—foregrounding relationality over fashion’s typical hierarchies.
Notable works and motifs
[edit]- Video & institutional critique at Japan Society (2022–23). Reviewers highlighted a video shot with a borescope that moves from Japan Society archives (colonial travel language, elite menus) into the “innards” of CFGNY’s own sculptures—framing the institution’s constructed “Japaneseness” and dissolving the desire for authenticity
- “New Fashion II” (2018). Sheer mesh garments distended by stuffed animals, indebted to Sianne Ngai’s aesthetics and Comme des Garçons’s “lumps and bumps,” later worn by artist Christine Sun Kim
- Cardboard architectures. Recurring cardboard environments—runways, wall systems, vernacular fragments—reference shipping infrastructures, Chinatown architectures, and the movement of goods/people
- Porcelain vessels. Press-molded from bound everyday objects (bottles, blouses), these works play on Europe’s historical “bootlegging” of Chinese porcelain while confusing authorship and value.[10]
Selected exhibitions & presentations
[edit]- 2025: CFGNY (group feature/essay), BOMB Magazine
- 2025: Continuous Fractures Generating New Yields, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
- 2023: Refashioning: CFGNY & Wataru Tominaga (with runway Fashion Max 2), Japan Society, New York
- 2023: Emporium (commission), Marsèll (with PIN–UP), Milan Design Week
- 2021: Collecting Dissonance, Auto Italia, London
- 2019: Surface Trend (runway presentation), Seward Park, New York
- 2018: Performance and campaign around Fake Fashion at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam[11]
Additional presentations include performances at the Berlinische Galerie (Park Platz, with Lucas Odahara) and projects with Triple Canopy and RISD Museum.
Reception
[edit]Coverage of Refashioning described CFGNY’s blend of runway and exhibition as a pointed response to the politics of Asian representation; Artforum read the work as abandoning authenticity in favor of dissolving essence, while Vogue and Interview emphasized the intergenerational Asian casting and community-building at Japan Society. Earlier profiles in AnOther and Frieze positioned CFGNY in the lineage of art–fashion experiments that use clothing to destabilize identity categories.
References
[edit]- ↑ "A Fashion Show That Widens the Lens on Asian Identity (Published 2023)". 2023-01-31. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ AnOther (2019-10-15). "CFGNY: The Art-Fashion Duo Creating Community With Clothes". AnOther. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ "CFGNY on Using Fashion to Expand Asian Identity". Asian American Arts Alliance. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ Kim, Irene (2023-01-30). "CFGNY: '90s Nostalgia at the Japan Society". Vogue. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ Zeiba, Drew (2023-02-24). "An Installation of Clothes, Cardboard, and Plywood Takes Over the Japan Society". Curbed. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ ""Collecting Dissonance" at Auto Italia". ArtAsiaPacific. 2021-08-22. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ Wu, Danielle (2023-01-24). "The Misfits". Artforum. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ "Mistranslation and Diaspora: The Brilliance of Fashion Collective CFGNY". Archived from the original on 2025-06-22. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ Nevins, Jake (2023-01-31). "CFGNY Stages a "Vaguely Asian" Fashion Show at Japan Society". Interview Magazine. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ "Lucas Odahara presents CFGNY 'Certain Forgotten Gestures Near Yourself' - Exhibition at Berlinische Galerie in Berlin". ArtRabbit. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
- ↑ Grrr.nl. "CFGNY". www.stedelijk.nl. Retrieved 2025-10-15.