Myth, Memory, and Migration: Stories from the Asian Diaspora
January 26-February 23, Opening Reception January 26 6-8pm
Curated by: Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin
Featuring: Amna Asghar, Dana Davenport, Umber Majeed, Tammy Nguyen, Ke Peng, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Sheida Soleimani
Myth, Memory, and Migration: Stories from the Asian Diaspora addresses the interconnections between race, sexuality, class, and debility in relation to cultural myths, migration, and memory. In dismantling the notion of a singular Asian identity, the artists from West, Central, South, Southeast, and East Asian diaspora highlight the complexity in their layered and transnational identities. They investigate the ways in which interweaving histories and ongoing legacies such as colonialism, US militarism, anti-blackness, and Islamophobia construct our understanding of and positionality to Asian identity through archiving, translating, and excavating myths, oral stories, and family lineages.
Amna Asghar speaks on the construction and translation of disparate references, cultures, geographies, and generations from Pakistan and America; Dana Davenport addresses the complexity of interminority racism within her own community and institutions from her experiences as a Black Korean American; Umber Majeed’s practice attempts to unpack the temporalities within South Asia as site, familial archival material, popular culture, and modern national state narratives; Tammy Nguyen interrogates natural sciences and non-human forms to explore racial intimacies and US military involvement in the Pacific Rim; Ke Peng documents the feeling of alienation and disorientation from urbanization and immigration by taking a journey into an imagined childhood in China, Hunan, where she was born and Schenzhen, a modern city where her family relocates to; Sahana Ramakrishan explores myths and religion from Buddhist and Hindu tales to speak upon the magic of childhood and the power dynamics of sexuality, race, and violence; Sheida Soleimani is an Iranian-American artist and a daughter of political refugees, making work to highlight her critical perspective on the historical and contemporary socio-political occurrences in Iran.
