RepresentAsian

SLAYSIAN Virtual Exhibition has gotten some great press coverage throughout Illinois’ shelter-in-place order. I’ve compiled a collection of these articles / interviews with artists (and yours truly) / reviews / etc. here. (Also in Facebook album form for the highlights.) Take a look!

May you and your loved ones continue staying healthy and safe.

Call for Artists: Asian and Black Unity

(Thank you to SLAYSIAN artist Aimy Tien for the tip!) A call for art from For the People Artists Collective Chicago: “Looking for Asian artists available to create artwork around Asian and Black unity!”

Here’s their post with the details.

(Speaking of such unity, here’s some fascinating history I fell into a rabbit hole reading about.)

Also, yesterday my mom told me about Darnella Frazier, and how she’s a hero and how scary and traumatic this must’ve been for her. Darnella is the teenaged girl who filmed the murder of George Floyd. Here’s the official GoFundMe to support her.

And! Here’s a reminder from a Movement icon; may she rest in power.

In solidarity, always.

Solidarity

  

Via the International Chinese Fine Arts Council:

“The slogan ‘Yellow Peril Supports Black Power originated from protests to free Huey Newton, a co-founder of the Black Panthers. […] [This] image is a historical archive original poster from the 1960s.”

Black lives matter.

Light

I am thrilled to announce that I’ve been selected to receive a 2020 Individual Artists Program grant from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events! Thank you, Mayor Lightfoot and DCASE!

(If this sounds familiar, I was awarded my first one back in the day for Dreams of a City. I used it to purchase stamps. Thousands of stamps.)

And if you didn’t see the previous post, some [more] levity through art: I’ve turned the group show of local Asian American artists I curated and subsequently postponed into a virtual one you can view while staying home (and saving lives).

Space

It’s here! I’ve launched SLAYSIAN: The Online Show! As you know, I curated an exhibition featuring 39 incredible local artists, a celebration of Chicago’s (and the surrounding Midwest area’s) Asian American talent. I ended up postponing it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This artwork deserves to be seen far and wide, so until we can all physically come together again, I’ve put together a virtual version for you to enjoy in the safety of your own home. May this serve as some welcome respite in these frightening times. May this also serve as an act of resistance and solidarity; it is needed now more than ever.

Here’s the main page. And here’s the artists page; click on each artist to view their art and bio/statement.

And: In honor of National Doctors Day, here’s another one of my aforementioned friends fighting on the front lines.

Greatest Generation

(Click for the full post.)

And one of my aforementioned friends on the front lines had this to say about the situation at her hospital, which is the situation in all hospitals across the US. We all need to do our part, and if you can, pitch in; every little bit counts. (And here’s the article she linked to; the last three paragraphs are a must-read.) The federal government is useless, so it’s up to us. All healthy hands on deck. This is wartime.

(To start, here and here are lists of donation sites for PPE.)

Lots more COVID-19 related news—including resources and ways to help, as well as light-hearted respite—on Twitter.

In the Time of

(For those not on social media, my announcement from Saturday.)

SLAYSIAN is postponed.

I’m so sorry, folks. It’s personally upsetting to me too, but I was in the gallery yesterday evening assigning wall space for all the artists, and while I was doing so we were listening to that day’s COVID-19 news. Our governor was practically begging folks to hunker down, and it would be irresponsible for me to go through with the show in the middle of all this. Plus, we wouldn’t be able to celebrate it with a big group of people anyway, and these artists’ work deserves that. So we’re postponing until the pandemic is over.

That said, postponement means I have hope that things will get better, and I have hope that in the near future we can put together an amazing show that everyone can come see in person.

I’ll still go forward with putting the art online in a virtual exhibition of sorts (after all, quarantine means I’ll have more time to do so).

We’re all in this together, and we’re all doing this to look out for one another. Please stay home as much as possible and as long as possible, #flattenthecurve, protect the elderly and immunocompromised, care for one another, stay healthy, stay safe, and have hope.

(P.S. As someone who’s been a [slight] germaphobe since age 10, it’s been interesting to see everyone else finally adopt all the habits I’ve always had. Even when this pandemic ends, let’s keep up with these habits! (As I keep saying, both for your sake and for your loved ones and communities.))

CelebrAsian

Thank you to everyone who applied to the open call for my next group exhibition, SLAYSIAN. Today, I am excited to announce the selected artists! Hailing from all over Chicago (and the surrounding Midwest area), these talented local Asian American artists include:

Aimy Tien, Alex Kostiw, Bumjin Kim, Caroline Liu, Charlene Moy, Chris Gallevo, Cindi Jean Zdrinc, Dan Castranova, Dao Nguyen, Eddie Yeung, Eric Mah, Gabriel Mo, James J Gu, Joyce Jodie Kim, Juliann Wang, Julius Bautista, Justin Suico, Kaitlyn Hwang, Kiki Jia Qi Zhen, Kristel Becares, Kristin Anahit Cass, Mendy Kong, Muriel Christensen, My Linh Mac, Nayeon Yang, Nini Kao, Priscilla Huang, Rialin José, Richard Gessert, Robert Apolinar, Saebom Yang, Sam Riesmeyer, Sierra Tuazon, Sophie Pokorny, Stafford Smith, Susie Xiong (InsomniaBird), Tshab Her, Vivian Le, and Yuqing Zhu.

Congratulations! This show is going to be amazing.

Everyone else, here’s the Facebook event page. (Notice something different? Apparently Facebook no longer allows you to create event names in all caps, even though that’s… my thing. See also: 2016’s LEXICON, and the URL for the Facebook event for 2012’s I CAN DO THAT somehow doesn’t work anymore but that was capitalized too, naturally. Anyway:) Invite yourself and your friends!

Alegría

First: I am so happy to announce that, for the third year in a row, I’ve been chosen to exhibit my artwork at the Chicago Public Library during May to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! This year, I’ll be in my own neighborhood’s branch: Logan Square! Thank you, CPL!

Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile.

Second: I know I haven’t been updating this blog much lately, and that’s an understatement [she says as she sheepishly looks at the post numbers by year in the Archive sidebar]. (Like, my last real post was a contextless but wistful one about my college reunion.) So I’ll simply bring you up to speed with my most recent adventure.

Last month, my parents and I traveled to Patagonia, where we rang in the new year. Going there was on my personal bucket list, which people have been asking me about since 2008 because of Dreams of a City, and I’m usually cagey with my answers, but now you know one of them.

Patagonia was, without a doubt, one of the best trips we’ve ever had. My mom said it was on the same level as when we went to Egypt (coincidentally, the same year I started my aforementioned mapping project), and my dad said—while we were standing in the above spot in Torres del Paine—that out of all the places we’ve been to, Patagonia is the most beautiful. I’m inclined to agree.

San Carlos de Bariloche, Patagonia, Argentina. First full day of our trip.

Yet even more than the grandeur of the landscapes and wonder of being in such wilderness was the beauty in the human connections. Music, passion, dancing in the heat, late nights overflowing with wine. Beautiful souls, rollicking laughter, finding that most things—and not just the age-old human desire to be near mountains and bodies of water—are universal. It’s summer in the southern hemisphere and all of it was the epitome of summer’s bittersweetness, fervent and fleeting. “Only connect,” that literary-reference-learned-as-a-teenager-turned-tenet-in-adulthood, comes to me again, and it couldn’t be more suited for a space where it’s a reflex to pass your mate to all your friends old and new and everyone drinks out of the same metal straw, and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect way to enter a brand-new decade.

Volcan Orsono, Los Lagos, Patagonia, Chile.
The ferry (one of many when crossing the Argentina-Chile border)
turning a bend and revealing this was unreal. New Year's Day.

(Even the imperfect was perfect. Like that time one of the many buses we’d take for the Argentina-Chile border crossing broke down before it reached us so we waited in the shade around a replica of Che Guevara’s La Poderosa II. Or that other time the trailer carrying our luggage broke and we bonded while stranded for four hours at a rest stop in Villa Tehuelches and then in our [absolutely lovely and lovable and hardworking and total sweetheart of a 23-year-old Argentine tour] guide Esteban’s hurry to finally leave… left behind Sonja from Vienna at said rest stop and didn’t realize it until the bus was already minutes away while driving at full speed. (We made a frantic U-turn to get her back.) It was straight out of a movie; it had us cackling and clapping; it was glorious.)

The mighty Glaciar Perito Moreno, Parque Nacional Los Glaciares,
Patagonia, Argentina. This is the third largest ice field in the world
(the first and second are in Antarctica and Greenland). 

I loved it all, and I already miss Argentina and Chile dearly. (I missed them as soon as our plane took off from Buenos Aires and my mom said “goodbye, Argentina” and then I whispered it and felt a swell of sadness, but still.) Naturally, I took a ton of photos (and yes, still with my little 5s) and have shared a few of them (33 photos/photosets) on Instagram. They’re also organized on my Tumblr with tags for Patagonia and Buenos Aires. (And if you enjoy scrolling, they’re also on Twitter and Facebook.)

Life is art; paint it with the world.

Mt. Tronador right after crossing the border from
Argentina's Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi to
Chile's Parque Nacional Vicente Perez Morales. Patagonia. New Year's Day.

Happy 2020!

Candid of my parents taking it all in.
Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile.

P.S. In case you missed the previous post, the call for artists for my next group show is up!

Call for Artists: SLAYSIAN

SLAYSIAN is a celebration—a celebrAsian, if you will—of local Asian American artists.

Artists on the Lam invites Asian American artists in Chicago and the larger Midwest area to submit work for this group exhibition, opening on Friday, March 20, 2020.

Created by artist and independent curator Jenny Lam, SLAYSIAN is the long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s acclaimed LEXICON, which featured 46 artists and was itself the successor to 2012’s acclaimed I CAN DO THAT, which was named the audience choice for “Best Art Exhibit” in the 20^th anniversary edition of NewCity’s Best of Chicago issue.

Local Asian American artists working in all mediums—painting, illustration, photography, sculpture, mixed media, multimedia, installation, textiles, you name it—are welcome to apply.

In addition to visual artists, SLAYSIAN also welcomes poets, writers, storytellers, performance artists, and performers of all types.

The art’s subject matter can be anything and everything. There isn’t necessarily a specific theme; this is above all a showcase of local contemporary Asian American talent. We inherently defy stereotypes and break boundaries simply by making art.

(In other words, this isn’t a show where the art needs to be about being Asian in America. Of course, if that’s what your art is about, then feel free to submit that!)

Eligibility:

1. You’re an Asian American artist. (It should go without saying, but this means all Asian ethnicities, including South Asian and Middle Eastern.)
2. You consider yourself a local artist. (Chicago, Chicagoland, Illinois, the Midwest, etc.) Folks outside of this area may apply too, but note that priority will be given to the Chicagoans and Midwesterners. Those of you who got your start here but have moved away are also welcome (we miss you!).

To apply:

Drawing Commissions 2019

It’s been a while, but I’m bringing it back (and this time it’ll be ongoing and not just for the holidays): I’m open for drawing commissions! Request custom drawings of anything you want!

Misaa, 2018.

In past years, portraits have been quite popular. As examples, here’s one I did for a friend from college of her, her husband, and their two Siberian cats; above is one of a requester’s dog-niece.

Power. Grace. Wisdom. Wonder, 2017.

Of course, I’m not limited to portraits, and feel free to get creative with your requests (which allows me to get creative too)! For instance, fellow artist, friend, and former mentor Robin Rios asked me to create a cartoon of her sculptures interacting, and this is what I came up with.

Safety Lights Are for Dudes, 2016.
(Sold at the Nasty Women Chicago Art Show with 100% of the sale going to
Planned Parenthood, 2017.)

All are graphite drawings on 70lb / 115gsm Acid-Free Canson Drawing Paper. For cartoons, an ink pen may be used as well. Each piece is signed on the back, and it will be mailed to you in a protective plastic sleeve.

Night Nurse, Scruffy-Looking Nerf Herder, Force, and AKA, 2015.
(All sold at LEXICON, 2016.)

Sound good? Good! Here’s how to proceed:

1. Email me your request, specifying the style you want. If your idea involves a real person, pet, etc., include good quality photos for reference.
2. I [hopefully] approve your request, and you pay via PayPal. (I also accept Chase QuickPay and Venmo.)
3. I create the drawing and mail it to you.

Gossamer series, 2008.

Looking forward to creating unique artworks for you!

And I’m here to remind you

Reunion 2019, Columbia University in the City of New York.

As the Starlight Celebration went on into the night and all milestone reunion years (every 5 years all the way up to ’49) danced under the benevolent gaze of Alma Mater, right after I took the photo above and descended from Low I found myself sitting on the Steps with my good friend Andrew (who, until reunion, I last hung out with 7 years ago in Beijing) and had a deep conversation about—literally—our mortality; love; loss; longing to leave a legacy and pass on our stories; how we’ve reached an age where we’ve made certain decisions we can’t ever come back from and must make peace with that; Andrew saying the question he asks himself now is “What do I want to get out of life?”, which I know will stick with me; how we don’t want certain feelings to ever fade away… all the good stuff, and it was so Columbia, and I loved it, and I love my friends I made here so much. He and I talked about how we don’t remember too much about what we learned in class (well for me I did internalize everything I learned freshman year, which is when I knocked out most of the Core, but after that… yeah sorry Columbia), but to us this place has always been and always will be about the people.

Honey, I'm home.
Columbia University, my 10-year reunion.

At my 5-year reunion it felt like I never left, like I had just come back from a long summer break. At 10 years though, enough time has passed to make it seem very, very strange. It’s all so familiar, yet—as I told Andrew—it feels dreamlike. Columbia, post-graduation, has always had a dreamlike quality to me, but when I wandered around campus that night I felt like a ghost. Like I was looking at everything through incorrect prescription contact lenses (which is highly probable). I lived here in another lifetime, something I did notice years back.

Who else from Columbia remembers the school-only
Facebook group from 2005 called "I had a crush on
Alexander Hamilton" because I did when I was 16.

And the next morning my throat was sore from scream-singing (while intermittently raising my wine cup) along to “You Oughta Know” which was inexplicably the last song the live band played.

"In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen."
Columbia Reunion during the Starlight Celebration portion of the night.

(But then there’s something so perfect about a crowd of dressed up Columbia alumni singing Alanis Morissette at the tops of our lungs at midnight.)

Using Riverside Church as a guide, spot Columbia, turquoise copper roof
Lego block oasis. Goodbye again. Miss all you nerds already.

Bloom

First, two updates:

I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about Asian representation in entertainment and media at Facebook Chicago for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Save the date; the event is Wednesday, May 22, 4-6pm, at 191 N. Upper Wacker Drive. [5/15 edit: Whoops, was just told this isn’t open to the public.]

I got interviewed by Voyage Chicago! (Half a year ago, but the article was recently published, heh.) Take a look!

My story on Voyage Chicago.

Two reminders:

I have an upcoming art exhibit at the Bessie Coleman Branch of the Chicago Public Library in Woodlawn throughout May, also in celebration of AAPIHM!

Chicago Public Library's news about my AAPIHM exhibit 2019.

Midwest artists, today is your final day to submit to Line Dot’s 3rd Annual Juried Art Show! I’m one of the guest judges; I’d love to see your work. All the details for the open call are here.

And just because:

Here’s a lovely new mural by Ouizi in an alley in West Town, just in time for spring.

Mural by Ouizi, West Town, Chicago, 2019.

(This post has been quite the unceremonious non-transition from my previous posts which I wrote during the beginning of my annual Hong Kong trip for Art Basel, I know.)

Happy almost May!

How to make the most of Hong Kong’s Art Gallery Night // or, Art Basel Hasn't Even Started Yet and My Legs Are Already Tired

Guys, I did it. I managed to attend 14 opening receptions within 2 hours* at Hong Kong’s Art Gallery Night tonight. And I was handed champagne at almost each one. And my last two stops required me hiking up a mountain (not really but it was uphill and that’s hard as a Midwesterner OK). *(Might I suggest that not every Hong Kong gallery host their event from 6-8pm on the same night?)

Leonardo Drew at Pearl Lam Galleries (no relation).
Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

My expert-level (half-kidding… but seriously) route that I recommend to anyone who’d want to see the highest concentration of high quality art within a limited amount a time (and, suffice it to say, the pictured pieces and linked exhibitions are my highlights / picks if you can only view a few):

If you’re taking public transit, exit at the Central MTR station. Arrive a little early and walk into the luxurious Landmark, where there’s always an art installation suspended from the ceiling. Once it’s time, start your gallery-hopping next door at the Pedder Building, which I’ve been visiting every single year I’ve been doing my annual Art Basel Hong Kong trip. Take the elevator to the top floor and work your way down via the stairs. This year’s Hong Kong Art Week / Hong Kong Arts Month, you’ll hit Leonardo Drew at Pearl Lam Galleries (no relation) on the sixth floor; What’s Up/Hong Kong on the fifth; Yeh Shih-Chiang: Edge of Sea and Sky at Hanart TZ Gallery (I always love coming here for Chinese art) and Edwin Wurm at Lehmann Maupin on the fourth; Overheated at Massimo De Carlo, Yoan Capote at Ben Brown Fine Arts, and Heimo Zobernig at Simon Lee Gallery on the third.

Vibing out to music at Yeh Shih-Chiang's Edge of Sea and Sky
at Hanart TZ Gallery. Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

Then, walk west on Queen’s Road and go to H Queen’s, which was a new destination last year. Again, take the elevator to the highest floor that has art and work your way down. This year, you’ll hit Zhang Yanzi: Seclusion at Ora-Ora on the seventeenth floor, Louise Bourgeois at Hauser & Wirth on the sixteenth and fifteenth, Mary Course at Pace Gallery on the twelfth, Unlock at Tang Contemporary Art on the tenth, Zhou Yangming: Continuum at Pearl Lam Galleries (yes, they have a second location here) on the ninth, and Miwa Komatsu: Divine Spirit at Whitestone Gallery on the eighth and seventh.

Stomping down seventeen flights in a stairwell can get tedious (as well as dizzying); good thing there’s a “site-specific public art experience” throughout the stairwell called Exit Strategies. (Fun fact: When I was 18 at Columbia, I built a 12-ft.-tall site-specific sculpture in what I thought was an abandoned stairwell and the grad students filed a complaint about it/me to OSHA. (Yes, that’s what that line refers to in my “About” page.) Thank goodness for my professor Lisi Raskin who had my back. Eventually, I destroyed my sculpture as part of my project. The transience of art! My piece was called Asymptote and remains one of the craziest and greatest things I’ve done, to be honest.)

HOCA Foundation | KAWS: Along the Way at PMQ.
Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

For the third and final leg, walk west and up all those steps that plague I mean characterize Sheung Wan to get to the Hollywood Road gallery area. I went for KAWS: Along the Way presented by HOCA Foundation at PMQ and Okuda: Digital Zoo at La Galerie – Paris 1839.

Okuda: Digital Zoo at La Galerie - Paris 1839.
Hong Kong's Art Gallery Night 2019.

Of course, there are galleries you’ll be skipping, but you can’t see everything in two hours. (Before H Queen’s existed, after the Pedder Building, I’d also visit the galleries around Ice House Street as well as attempt to see White Cube and others on Connaught Road.)

Note that I’m not factoring in any time for socializing—I purely viewed the art—so your mileage may vary. (I did, however, run into the HKwalls folks at the Okuda show.)

Lastly, this goes without saying for me (since I’m always in sneakers) but might not be as obvious to everyone else: Wear comfortable shoes.

And that’s the first night of Hong Kong Art Week! See you at the fairs!

“Life’s too short for sad art” // A preview of HKwalls 2019

(As you know from my previous post, I’m in Hong Kong for Art Basel right now. Hello from the true city that never sleeps! Upon my arrival last night, I had a late dinner with my paternal grandma and uncles at nearly 10pm on a weeknight in a food court in Mongkok, Kowloon, and it was still packed. I love it.)

I write this with multiple cocktails* in my system. *(Went with my old favorite: Old-Fashioneds. Thank you to HKwalls for treating us!) Today I had the pleasure of attending the HKwalls Media Preview, in which I, well, previewed the 2019 edition of Hong Kong’s annual street art festival, which has impressively expanded this year to include a multi-floor alternative art space called The Clubhouse—renovated from a traditional tong lau, which had previously fallen into disrepair, to be an inclusive venue where people can view art, make art, and hang out—as well as many other public interactive (also my favorite) art activities that will take place this week; got a [hot and humid (not that I’m complaining considering the brutal winter we had in the Midwest)] guided tour of all the art to come throughout the Wan Chai neighborhood, where the festival will be held this year; and, alongside the participating street artists, was treated to a sit-down family-style dinner (which none of us anticipated, going, “I didn’t know we were getting a full meal…”) and drinks at an Italian American restaurant (said one of the artists to me, “It’s not like there’s any pizza or Italians in Chicago…”).

Waiting on the 3rd floor of The Clubhouse before the HKwalls 2019
Media Preview. Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

In The Clubhouse, we watched artist talks and demonstrations, including a hands-on encaustic painting workshop by Elizabeth Briel, who uses local beeswax. You all know how much I love data and mapping, so Elizabeth’s mention of a project of hers caught my attention; she has encaustic pieces of photos she took all over Hong Kong, each a square foot in size, and she’s selling each one for the same price of real estate per sq. ft. in the corresponding location where she took each picture.

Elizabeth Briel's encaustic workshop, HKwalls 2019 Media Preview
at The Clubhouse. Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

(She herself lives in a 150 sq. ft. apartment in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon. Honestly, though? Despite the size—and despite my admitted initial reaction of “That’s crazy!”—it sounds nice; it’s a rounded building, and her outer wall is all windows. To compare, my dad and his brothers grew up in the famed Shek Kip Mei public housing projects, where multiple families resided in 120 sq. ft. concrete units, with the only window in each one looking out onto a narrow corridor. Like I said in that classic blog post I just linked to, however, they were happy. And now I truly digress.)

Erig Ng, HKwalls 2019 Media Preview at The Clubhouse.
Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

Another talk by artist Eric Ng involved a fun and wholesome little skit featuring “Mr. Bean.” In keeping with all that’s good and pure, around the corner outside, San Francisco-based street artist fnnch was spray-painting one of his Honey Bears. “Honey bears make me happy,” he explained. “Life’s too short for sad art.”

fnnch, HKwalls 2019. Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

Over 30 street artists will be creating colorful murals for the festival this week. One piece that’s already been completed is INSA’s “gif-iti” mural; if you download his app and view his piece through it, the image moves!

INSA, HKwalls 2019. Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

Towards the end of the dinner and drinks, since I happen to be wearing my Logan Square Blue Line CTA station t-shirt and carrying my Block Club Chicago Founding Member tote bag (hey, being Chicagoan and proud is a thing, man), fnnch caught me by surprise when he turned to me and went, “So, Chicago!” and proceeded to tell me he knows Logan and chatted with me about the Chicago places where he’s painted murals. (It’s always wild and beautiful and wild to talk about ­­­the familiarity of home out of context halfway around the world.) I learned something today; apparently, San Francisco doesn’t really have a street art scene (particularly of the under-40 generation), which is good news for fnnch and, like, his four peers so they’ve pretty much monopolized that area. (And that was a tangent about being an artist in San Francisco.)

HKwalls officially begins tomorrow (March 23), with an opening party at The Clubhouse (6 Steward Rd.). Check their website for a mural map, a schedule of events such as workshops, and more. Everything is free and open to the public.

Equinox

Happy first day of spring! I’m going on my annual Hong Kong trip for Art Basel today! (Thank you, as always, to Basel, Art Central, Asia Contemporary Art Show, et al. for the VIP program invitations!) Feel free to follow along on Twitter and Instagram for live updates and photos of my travels. Anticipate a blog post or two as well. (One of my highlights from last year? A studio visit with self-taught artist Fung Ming Chip.)

To celebrate the season: The dyed green Chicago River in 2018.

Until I’m back on April 3, you can: Apply to Line Dot Editions’ 3rd Annual Open Call Group Show (I’m one of the guest judges); look forward to my upcoming exhibit at the Chicago Public Library during May in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month; and vote in the Chicago mayoral runoff election before (like I did) or on April 2. Be a part of history!

312

First, two bits of upcoming art exhibition news (one of them a call for artists):

I am proud to announce that, for the second year in a row, I’ve been chosen to exhibit my work at the Chicago Public Library during May to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! I’ll be showing at the Coleman Branch, serving the Woodlawn, Hyde Park, and Greater Grand Crossing neighborhoods (last year, I was at West Chicago in Austin). Thank you, CPL!

The call: I’ve been invited to be one of the guest judges for Line Dot Editions’ 3rd Annual Open Call Group Show! It’s always a pleasure to be on their jury. Chicago and Midwest artists, apply! You can view all the details here. (Important dates: The application deadline is April 30, and the opening reception is June 21.)

At the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei.
(My parents and I traveled to Taiwan for the first time in November.)

An art review of sorts: A few weeks ago I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to check out the new Laurie Simmons exhibit, Big Camera/Little Camera, without knowing anything about Simmons beforehand. And. Well. Here’s my two-tweet criticism of her and the exhibit. (My friend—and former Columbia classmate!—Trilbe’s responses were more eloquently put than mine.) And here’s when I learned that Simmons’ daughter is Lena Dunham, and suddenly it all made sense…

Speaking of propping up Asian women instead of whatever mess is going on in the fourth floor of the MCA and how important it is for us to tell our own stories: A couple weeks ago I went to a discussion and signing by Chinese American activist and journalist Helen Zia for her new book, Last Boat Out of Shanghai, and what a night it was. Read my Twitter thread about it (and our history, and the things we inherit, and hope) here.

Political nerdery: Holy shit, Lori Lightfoot! I voted for her in our municipal elections, which were already historic since there were 14 mayoral candidates and no clear frontrunner, and she ended up in first place! I truly thought Bill Daley was going to win. She and Toni Preckwinkle will face off in runoffs so either way, Chicago will get its first black woman mayor! And if Lightfoot wins, she’ll also be our first openly gay mayor! This is so exciting. Fellow Chicagoans, be a part of history and be sure to vote again on April 2. (Or earlier, like I will, since I’ll be out of the country.)

Social media: Yesterday I realized I have over 2,000 followers on Instagram! Thank you! (Another social media-related feat? When my childhood hero Michelle Kwan liked a tweet of mine. My literally mouth dropped.)

My top liked Instagram photos of 2018, thanks to you.

Lastly: I know posts have been sparse here lately so this is, believe it or not, the first blog post of 2019. Oops. As a year in review, here’s my Twitter thread of my highlights and favorite blog posts of 2018. Wishing you all a [very belated] very happy new year and Year of the Pig!