The untitled abstract pastel by Carrie Yamoka is the first piece Bob Lee ever collected for the AAAC collection, setting the precedent for AAAC’s collection.

Heartmind Portraits Fay Chiang.mp3

To the left is a portrait by Fay Chiang, a poet and the executive director of Basement Workshop, the earliest New York-based Asian American arts organization. Chiang’s lyrical painting depicts her father, Bay Doc Chiang, whom she often wrote about. In her poem, “Parents,” she wrote:

the navy yards as an apprentice steelwelder

Heartmind Portraits Bob Hsiang.mp3

The black and white photograph of Hisako Hibi, a Japanese American painter and printer based in San Francisco is by Bob Hsiang, an early pioneer in the west coast Asian American movement. This image represents the vast network of Asian American artists represented in the AAAC collection.

Portrait of Hisako Hibi, 1983, photograph

Heartmind Portraits Bob Lee.mp3

This whimsical drawing is by Bob Lee himself. Completed in 1974, it was published in 1999 by Godzilla, an influential Asian American arts collective and support network founded in 1990.

This group of works personifies the origins of the Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) collection and aspects of Asian American art history.

Origins: Personifying the AAAC’s Collection History

Heartmind Portraits Leah Melnick.mp3

Scratch the surface of “Asian American” and myriad identities, experiences, stories, and perspectives emerge, like that of the Cambodian teenagers in Leah Melnick’s photograph. Taken in 1987 in the Bronx, New York, Melnick had an “interest in preserving a historical document of surviving members of a war-torn culture who are trying to make a new life for themselves in the United States.”

Heartmind Portraits Tseng Kwong Chi.mp3

In Cape Canaveral, Tseng Kwong Chi poses in a stereotypical “Mao” suit beside what is assumed to be the Eagle, the first lunar model to land on the moon, inspired by Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong born, Canada bred, and a downtown New York art scene fixture by the 1980s, Tseng photographed himself, the perpetual foreigner and tourist, in front of landmarks across the U.S. for his “East Meets West” series.

Heartmind Portraits Toyo Tsuchiya.mp3

Born in Japan, Toyo Tsuchiya went to New York at 32 on a three-month visa and decided to stay. One may interpret his self portrait as two sides of America: the “foreign” Tsuchiya and the “quintessentially American” icon Marilyn Monroe. In between, an American flag separates, or perhaps, joins them, as they gaze at each other with skepticism or interest.

Tetsu Okuhara’s collage depicts his then lover’s face in six parts. Born in Los Angeles in 1940, he was imprisoned in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. This may suggest one reading of the fragmentation in his work: the compartmentalization of memories and past experiences, which at the same time come together to form a greater whole.

Heartmind Portraits Ed Pien (Curators).mp3

Canadian artist Ed Pien depicts an evocative, if somewhat disturbing, image. Born in Taiwan, Pien’s work often explores themes of ghosts, sinister creatures, and the “messiness” of bodies depicted in images of both Taiwanese and Western hells. But who is this baby? Some demon or god? The artist himself? Culture or identity? What does it mean to eat away at one’s own culture or identity? Does it disappear forever or become part of the greater whole?

Finally in Sungmi Naylor’s untitled print, a shadow figure appears on a bent back. Is the shadow cast from without, forced by an unknown source, or from within as an emerging dark self?

How do we define Asian American identity? The following works explore the complexities and construction of identity.

Heartmind Portraits Danny Yung.mp3

Danny Yung (brother to AAAC cofounder Eleanor Yung) came to the U.S. from Hong Kong for college and graduate school, and along with his sister, helped establish the Basement Workshop. Tian Tian, the character Yung created in the 1970s, was inspired by the Chinese proverb, tian tian xiang shang, meaning “study well and climb higher every day,” commonly seen on school gates throughout China starting in the 1950s. While the proverb encouraged students to work hard, Yung thought they lacked critical thinking and would grow into adults who, as the text on the drawing suggests, lack their own opinions. Conversely, Tian Tian is a curious little boy who questions everything. The text translation reads:

Head is round, Ears are big, Nose is small,

While many of the phrases are traditional Chinese idioms, the last one is contemporary, sometimes invoked to analyze and decipher particular political situations in China into the present moment.

In "Three Women - See, Hear, Speak No Evil," avant-garde feminist printmaker and performance artist Yoshiko Shimada critiques the silence of Japanese women during World War II. Much of her art addresses Japan’s relationship with World War II and its often nostalgic portrayals. “Unfortunately, the old generation tries to ignore the past and the young are ignorant of the past,” she has said.

Three Woman - See, Hear, Speak No Evil, Speak, 1992

Heartmind Portraits Lee C Lee.mp3

Lee C. Lee was an Asian American studies pioneer (she was founding director of the East Coast’s first Asian American Studies program at Cornell), but also studied the lives of those in China. In 1981, she was the first American psychologist permitted to do research in China after the Cultural Revolution. She studied the development of children in Beijing and Shanghai and also traveled through Xinjiang, home to the Uyghur ethnic minority, capturing moments from their everyday lives.

This grouping of works considers international influence within Asian American art history - and the impact this art has on the rest of the world.

Global Exchanges: International Influences in Asian American Art

The otherworldly sketch by Toshio Sasaki of the Manhattan Bridge was an idea for a monument at the entrance of Chinatown. Lee writes more about this image in his exhibition essay.

Known for capturing the everyday moments of Chinatown residents, here Corky Lee instead depicts two white police officers — one covering his ears, the other looking startled by the sounds of a Chinatown celebration — perhaps a personification of the relationship between police and Chinatown as well as that of the outside world and the ethnic enclave.

Leh Chyun Lin's photo depicts a resident in historic Seward Park, Chinese opera drum in hand, New York baseball cap on his head — perhaps the very essence of NYC Chinatown

This trio of works come together to depict different aspects of the neighborhood: place, the relation of Chinatown with outsiders, and the residents themselves.

Reflections of Chinatown in the AAAC Collection

Heartmind Portraits Toshio Kuga.mp3

Kuga's box — which he also considers a metaphor for a mind — is painted black when closed but opens to unfurl a gold-painted hand and blood-red tassels, an offering to the people of Tibet suffering under Chinese conquest.

Heartmind Portraits Sung Ho Choi.mp3

This section is anchored in the center by Sung Ho Choi’s "Mind," which depicts the Chinese character “心” (which means both “heart” and “mind”) in lottery tickets, alluding to the place of faith and luck within the daily toil of Asian immigrants within the U.S.

Heartmind Portraits Anna Kuo.mp3

The personal inextricably intersects the political in the doubled heartbreak of Kuo’s painting, created around the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The works here are some of the closest to Bob Lee’s heart — which is fitting, as two of the works depict hearts.

This grouping features artworks reflective of conversations between the curators and Lee about Asian American art history. Topics explored included ideas of home, intergenerational dialogue, conceptual artmaking, and unique forms of making.

from the Bob Eng Lee and Asian American Arts Centre Collections

Adopting a broad definition of portraiture, this grouping of works explores personal images that capture the history of Asian American art. Each artwork is to be viewed through related themes, including organizational histories, issues of identity, topics of translation , international exchanges, and life in Chinatown.

HEARTMIND: Portraits

from the Bob Eng Lee and Asian American Arts Centre Collections

Origins: Personifying the AAAC’s Collection History

Picturing Identity in Asian American Art

Global Exchanges: International Influences in Asian American Art

Reflections of Chinatown in the AAAC Collection

Heart/Mind: Spiritual Conceptions of Art