Heartmind Selections Ming Fay.mp3

Fay typically works from nature, creating surreal sculptures of plants and gardens. This rare piece, a ceramic chalice of a head, has rarely been exhibited. Accompanying the chalice are two smaller sculptural heads that fit inside the larger structure.

Though Fay often depicts botanical themes, his work is rooted in the context of New York City and Chinatown. Fay was a founding member of the Epoxy Arts Group and exhibited with the AAAC throughout his career. In addition to sculptural works such as this one, Fay also made mosaics for the Delancey-Essex Subway Station and the Staten Island Whitehall Subway Station.

Clay Head (1 of 3), late 1970s Sculpture (clay)

Heartmind Selections Nina Kuo.mp3

Chinese American multimedia artist Nina Kuo was a one-time member of Basement Workshop and Godzilla, as well as the very first Artist-in-Residence at the Asian American Arts Centre. Her work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the New Museum. 

Kuo has engaged in a longtime dialogue with mainland China, having worked there in 1980, lectured at Beijing University and China News Service, and has delved into ideas of Chinese spirituality, history, and ideas of femininity. Here, her signature densely layered paintings are set in ambiguous, surrealistic space, exploring ideas of home, loss, and eviction. Both Pigtail Couple in a Bottle and Eviction Cell Phone Pigtail may have been included in AAAC’s 2005 exhibition, “Eviction Blues,” which dealt with the threat of AAAC’s own loss of its longtime space.

Heartmind Selections Tara Sabharwal.mp3

Tara Sabharwal studied at Baroda Art College, a school known for its emphasis on both Euro-American and Indian painting techniques. Her early work demonstrated a knowledge and interest in Mughal painting, with its flattened pictorial space and emphasis on narrative. During her master’s degree work at the Royal College of Art in London, she became inspired by the work of the Romantics and Expressionists, such Munch, Goya, and Blake; after, her work became looser and more gestural, with deeper pictorial space. Sabrharwal’s image reflects her interpretation of the multifaceted cultural influences, a theme prominent in Asian American art.

Heartmind Selections Wing Young Huie.mp3

Wing Young Huie is a renowned photographer of the socio-cultural realities of immigrant communities in his native Minnesota. This intimate black and white photograph depicts young Hmong girls in traditional clothing. St. Paul, Minnesota, holds the largest urban Hmong population in the world.

Heartmind Selections Evri Kwong.mp3

Tibetan American artist Evri Kwong’s bold, graphic images, rendered in thick sharpie and ink, distill large-scale issues like housing injustice, religious intolerance, and consumerism. This work discusses themes of gentrification and eviction.

The Fun House, New Housing for the Poor, 2004

Heartmind Selections Jerry Kwan.mp3

A member of Epoxy Art Group, Jerry Kwan’s painted scene, depicting an intersection in Chinatown, was a feature in AAAC’s 1986 exhibition The City. The AAAC collection includes several of Kwan’s sketches of this scene, which was not far from the AAAC’s gallery spaces.

This grouping of works explores ideas of home, cultural identity, and displacement – a topic prominent in discussion between the curators and Lee.

Reflections of Home: Artwork that Explores Ideas of Place

Heartmind Selections Joseph Gotto.mp3

Goto studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was Influenced by artist Wifredo Lam. In addition to prints, Goto created monumental steel sculptures, of which is best-known for. In conversations with the curators, Lee discussed how Gotto’s sculptural sensibility is partially visible in the work on display, as it gives a sense of his massive, jagged, toothy sculptures.

This somewhat unusual early work by artist Chalres Yuen. Yuen gifted this work to Lee, who agreed to exhibit it for the first time. Yuen’s work was supported by AAAC across decades. This piece shares some of Yuen’s signature motifs: ambiguous space, muted colors. Here, at least as contained within the luminous gold leaf -- and Chinese rice hat.

Heartmind Selections Arlan Huang.mp3

A one-time member of the amorphous arts collective Godzilla, Huang works in painting, glassware, and more. Huang, a long-time advocate for Chinatown, submitted this work to the AAAC exhibition CHINA: June 4 1989, along with more than 300 artists. While many of the works traveled for four years to different parts of the USA, many of the smaller works, including this one, did not. 

Noting the water damage, Huang and the curators wanted to show this work as a call to action for increased support of archives for people of color.

Heartmind Selections Julie Nee Chu.mp3

Chu submitted After June 4 to the traveling AAAC exhibition CHINA: June 4 1989. This sculpture traveled for four years around the United States, along with works by more than 300 artists. After 30 years, most of the exhibited artworks were transferred to Humanitarian China, Tiananmen Mothers, and other human rights organizations in China.

Sculpture (wire, silk thread, wax, red ink)

Heartmind Selections Soon Im Kim.mp3

This sculpture is created entirely of wool. Since receiving her MFA in sculpture from Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, Kim has exhibited all around the world. Finely crafted, this work is an example of the fusing of Asian & Western methods, values, and thinking, and indicative of some paradoxes and contradictions at play. Lee often invites AAAC interns to respond to this sculpture!

The next selection of works each held personal significance to Lee. Though all of the works in the collection are of great importance to Lee, this grouping highlights works that were uniquely acquired, gifted to Lee, or shown in important exhibitions. The unearthed narratives behind each work’s acquisition instill the importance of intergenerational dialogue in furthering our knowledge of Asian American art history.

Intergenerational Histories: Artworks of Shared Significance to Lee and the Curators

Heartmind Selections Kwok Mang Ho.mp3

Kwok Mang Ho is a conceptual artist known for his installations, performances, brightly colored paintings, and signature frog drawings. A founding member of Chinatown-based Epoxy Art Group (1982 - 1992), Kwok exhibited and participated in many AAAC events while resident in New York City, including in the exhibition Roots to Reality II (1986) and with his regular attendance at AAAC’s Folk Arts Festivals. Inspired by these Folk Art Festivals, in particular the Chinese Folk Deities programs, Kwok produced his own art on this theme. 

From Lee: “He is a lovable character who could steal a show”

Heartmind Selections Tai Dang.mp3

Tai Dang’s AAAC-sponsored performance took place in Columbus Park in 1996. Utilizing tech support, sound engineers, musicians, and performers, the performance critiqued the newly-invented cell phone. Dang was born in Vietnam and lives and works in New York City.

Heartmind Selections Tehching Hsieh.mp3

Tehching Hsieh is a renowned performance artist, known for his often brutal performance pieces. Notable performances include Jump Piece (1973), for which he broke both of his ankles, and his mostly one-year durational performances. For Thirteen Year Performance, Hsieh refused to show work for thirteen years, until the turn of the millennium.

Heartmind Selections Chen Zhen.mp3

A Chinese-French conceptual artist well-known for his large installations, Zhen challenged the predominance of Western consumerism and values, incorporating Buddhist and Daoist references and often using antique Chinese material in his works. 

Because he could not raise the necessary funds to put on the exhibition he desired, as an act of protest, Chen sealed the work inside this wooden box and nailed it shut, inscribing the box with the work’s new names. This work was of great interest to the curators, as they felt it expertly reflected the challenges of exhibiting art in New York as an Asian American artist.

Many of the artworks in the AAAC collection were made during the late twentieth century – a time when conceptual art dominated contemporary art discussions and an area of interest to the three curators. The following works emphasize the idea over the artwork to create experiential works related to their experiences as Asian American artists in New York.

Ideas of Asian American Art: Conceptual Artworks in the AAAC Collections

Heartmind Selections Akiko Kotani.mp3

Akiko Kotani considered her work to reflect the most fundamental elements of visual artmaking: drawing, plain weave, and stitching. 

Multicultural influences, not just the Japanese culture of her heritage but those of her interests, also permeate her work. She studied, for instance, under a Mayan weaver in Guatemala, which piqued her awareness of the interweaving of woven fabric into her own familial history, and later studied Mbuti scratchings on beaten bark fiber.

Heartmind Selections Yoshiki Araki.mp3

The day after the US bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Yoshiki Araki’s mother searched for his grandfather in the rubble and did not find him. Araki grew up within that familial memory. He came to New York in 1974 to study at the Arts Students League. There, he began making a series of photo collage boxes filled with wax which are on view in this exhibition. As with many other works and artists in this collection, Araki was beset by issues finding spaces to make and store his art. This is visible in The Kiss (1996): he was unable to fill many such works with wax before he got evicted from his home in Brooklyn. These struggles continue for many artists. This painting, amongst many others he created throughout his lifetime, was donated to the AAAC by Araki’s widow following his passing in 2000.

Heartmind Selections Nguyen Long.mp3

Nguyen came to the US as a refugee after the Vietnam War. In his thick impasto paintings, Nguyen depicts plants, truncated body parts, abstract spirals and markings. In the ocherous maelstrom of this painting, a viewer can make out certain forms: the sinuous curve of a rib cage along the bottom of the work. The Asian American Arts Centre launched a mid-career retrospective show of his work.

Heartmind Selections Tam Van Tran.mp3

Tran creates large mixed-media drawings with medium lines including anything from chlorophyll, eggshell, and gelatin. This more toned-down work anticipates and corresponds to his mosaic, kaleidoscopic work with its webbing of aluminum foil, punctuated with staples.

In addition to the AAAC collection, Tran’s works are collected at the Albright-Knox Gallery, the Broad, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, and more.

Many of the works in Lee’s collection extend material categorization. The following works were selected because of their notable aesthetic qualities.

Material Explorations: Artworks featuring Innovative Ideas of Making

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.

from the Bob Eng Lee and Asian American Arts Centre Collections

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.

HEARTMIND: Selections

from the Bob Eng Lee and Asian American Arts Centre Collections

Reflections of Home: Artwork that Explores Ideas of Place

Intergenerational Histories: Artworks of Shared Significance to Lee and the Curators

Ideas of Asian American Art: Conceptual Artworks in the AAAC Collections

Material Explorations: Artworks featuring Innovative Ideas of Making