It is difficult for anyone to tell a story about being Chinese. On the surface, we have consummatory trends like “At A Very Chinese Time of My Life”; otherwise, we often see over-sensationalized narratives about geopolitical maneuverings. Yet, in the undertow, Chinese people work and make in conditions full of positional and situational complexity, and they belong to nuanced communities. Under the Common Sea is a group exhibition where artists and cultural workers came together to showcase the range and diversity of experiences, relationalities, and perspectives on identity among Chinese and Sinophone diasporic peoples in NY and across the United States.
Continue reading “Under the Common Sea | 海的下面还有海”Vessels: Bodies, Tales & Machines at Westbeth Gallery
The concept of a vessel offers multiple realities and interpretations that can vary, grow, and expand. In this exhibition titled Vessels: Bodies, Tales & Machines, the idea of a vessel takes the shape of both three-dimensional and two-dimensional works–all of which flow throughout the meandering Westbeth Gallery space. The term vessel itself can be considered a container: its external surroundings, the content, and the internal parts that are often unseen are included with it. These visible aspects of form and material, along with the invisible stories that are nested within the forms, are present throughout the works of the four artists: Jeanne Verdoux, Fanny Allié, and the collaboration between Nicolas Touron and Amy Lemaire. Each artist’s interpretation of a vessel connects the inside to the outside in their own ways and allows viewers to experience each artist’s narrative within their work.
Continue reading “Vessels: Bodies, Tales & Machines at Westbeth Gallery ““Best by 07/21/2026” at Eli Klein Gallery
For artists Clare Hu, Tianyi Sun, and Shaan Ken Rao, their residency-then-exhibition is already well past its expiration date. Entering the group show Best by 07/21/2026 may feel more like intruding on a gallery’s installation or deinstallation than attending its finished presentation. Moving blankets are spread across the walking path, with splashes of white paint visible on the quilted fabric. Glass tables lean on white walls. Enter the back room, and you may trip over one of many sandbags, or duck your head under the arm of a swinging C-stand.
Continue reading ““Best by 07/21/2026” at Eli Klein Gallery”Beautifully Fall Apart
Women constantly fall, from rule, from discourse, from childbirth, from ecstasy, from sacrifice, from love, from anguish. We are still in the place of repeatedly coalescing to regain voice and visibility across political, economic, pedagogical, and creative fields. Comprehending it through cultural theorist and sociologist Angela McRobbie, we see that women are made to bear greater precarity, conditioned by institutions, by discourse, by an economy that asks for passion in place of pay; entering the creative fields comes with a demand to be self-managing, enterprising and unquestioningly cheerful about it. Women might be naturally leading the creative sector but meanwhile, fall heavily onto body, conditions and time, carrying its costs behind the facade of the neoliberal art industry.
Continue reading “Beautifully Fall Apart”Atay Ilgun and Jonathan Carmel on ./spiral at Fondazione Aversano
How does a field barely a decade old start to have a past? ./spiral takes up that question, gathering eleven artists who were present at the early days of AI, code, and blockchain art and asking each to pick up a formative work, tool, or loose end and carry it forward from where they are now. For co-curator Atay Ilgun, a London-based artist and technologist, the burst of new tools between 2017 and 2022 has only lately settled far enough into the past to be seen clearly. His fellow curator, SuperRare’s Jonathan Carmel, describes the return as a way of moving forward by first turning around. The works cross from screen into matter along the way, Helena Sarin’s ceramics drawing AI imagery toward ancient clay, Robbie Barrat’s Plexiglas prints nudging it back toward the glow of a monitor. Presented by SuperRare at Justin Aversano’s Fondazione Aversano in New York, September 3–10. Here, Ilgun and Carmel discuss how the show came together, the move from screen to object, and the histories their artists carry forward.
Continue reading “Atay Ilgun and Jonathan Carmel on ./spiral at Fondazione Aversano”Transcendence at FOU Gallery
Transcendence, a group exhibition of sculptures and paintings, is curated by Helena Jin and on view at FOU Gallery from July 11 – September 5, 2026. The artists Tianshu Zhang (张天舒), Gloria Fan Duan (樊段晓春), and Tao Xian (陶显) explore the show’s theme of transcendence in vastly different formal ways. Despite Helena Jin’s scholarly background in researching Buddhist art history, the type of transcendence posed by the show is distinctly secular; while some of the artists reference East Asian tradition and symbolism, the “beyond” or spiritual is achieved through individual artistic approaches to color and form.
Continue reading “Transcendence at FOU Gallery”Do I Know You From Somewhere? at Transmitter: Alison Kudlow, Susan Meyer, Hanna Washburn, and Se Young Yim
Entering the bright gallery space, shared with Tiger Strikes Asteroid on the other side of the wall, you are welcomed by brightness and playfulness. Like walking into a kindergarten classroom, a playroom, or a yoga studio, the sculptural inhabitants are cordial yet also preoccupied with themselves. It is no coincidence that the curator and three of the artists are mothers who spend time with children.
Continue reading “Do I Know You From Somewhere? at Transmitter: Alison Kudlow, Susan Meyer, Hanna Washburn, and Se Young Yim “America, Unfinished?! at WaterFire Arts Center
America, Unfinished?!, a national exhibit at WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, RI, features the work of 80 artists from 13 states and territories. I visited the 15,000-square-foot former rubber factory on a hot July day. The light-filled space is several stories high and could dwarf almost anything smaller than a jet, so it took me a while to find my bearings and focus on the work.
Continue reading “America, Unfinished?! at WaterFire Arts Center”Greater New York and the identity and pulse of the city at MoMA PS1
Walking through MoMA PS1 for the first time in several years, I realized how much it has changed and how much I still remembered from my first visit, before officially becoming a New Yorker. The meandering, bustling energy of the building remained, each turn and new corridor offering discoveries. It was special to witness how eclectic and unique each artist’s vision and process was and how many identities and stories are gathered under one roof. Organized for the first time by MoMA PS1’s full curatorial team, the exhibition emphasizes the forces that shape daily life in the city today. This includes strategies of resistance and adaptation in the face of increased surveillance, shifting identities, economic uncertainties, how we view ourselves and others, and the ever-changing technologies around us. This exhibition notes both optimism and anxiety throughout all of the artists’ attention to the layered, eclectic lived textures of New York City and the people intertwined within it.
Continue reading “Greater New York and the identity and pulse of the city at MoMA PS1”Fugue Gallery Finds a New Home with Forbidden Fruit
Located along the central artery of Little Italy, amid a glut of red sauce joints with checkered tablecloths, sits the new home of Fugue Gallery. Having recently relocated from Canal Street to Mulberry Street, the space, a 1,000-square-foot brick loft, eschews white box sterility for something more atypical.
Continue reading “Fugue Gallery Finds a New Home with Forbidden Fruit”