Wennie Huang, “Between Heaven and Earth,” 2003, Cast abaca paper with methyl cellulose.
Link to the captioned recording.
About the lecture
New York based artists, Wennie Huang & Tomie Arai, share how their art practices relate to their personal and cultural histories, memory, and art making. Each exploring layered narratives of what it means to be a femme Asian American artist influenced by their upbringing, background, and the current moment, while questioning the current space—can the pursuit of one’s own creation shatter and outgrow the current understanding of identity and history? Moderated by curator, Vivian Sangsukwirasathien, with a Q&A to follow.
This online event will take place on Thursday, May 13th from 5 PM—6 PM EST.
This talk will last approximately 40 minutes, followed by questions. To attend, register via this Eventbrite Portal.
This program is pay-as-you-wish, with a suggested minimum donation of $5.00. After registering, attendees will automatically receive a registration confirmation from Eventbrite and an email from Zoom with the link to join the program.
All Dieu Donné virtual events include the option of live virtual captioning. If you have any requests or needs prior to the event, please contact dieudonne@dieudonne.org.
About the Artists:
Tomie Arai is a public artist who works with local communities to create visual narratives that give meaning to the spaces we live in. Through a framework of collaboration, Arai uses the specificity of her experience as an Asian American as a personal space in which to locate broader issues of race and gender; a space through which a glimpse of common ground is made possible. Working towards a more equitable art world and addressing Issues of racial justice are at the heart of her artistic practice.
Arai has designed both temporary and permanent public works of art for Creative Time, the Smithsonian Institution, the US General Services Administration Art in Architecture Program, the NYC PerCent for Art Program, the MTA Arts for Transit Program, The National Endowment, and the San Francisco Arts Commission. She is the co-founder of the Chinatown Art Brigade, an Asian diasporic cultural collective that centers art and culture as a way to support community led campaigns to fight displacement. Arai is currently a 2020 Transnational Fellow with Monument Lab, an initiative that reimagines public space through stories of social justice and equity. For more information, visit Arai’s website.
Wennie Huang is a mixed media artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She has created work through artist residencies at the Center for Book Arts, Sculpture Space, Lower East Side Printshop, Dieu Donne Papermill, and the Ragdale Foundation, and she is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the New School's Innovations in Education Fund, and a permanent art commission through New York City's Percent for Art Program. In 2020, she became an Art Ambassador for Royal Talens North America. She teaches at Parsons School of Design, the 92nd Street Y Art Center, Wave Hill, and the Pastel Society of America, where she is a Signature member.
Her recent work consists of drawings, collaborations, and site-specific installations, which explore relationships between identity and loss, landscape and collective memory. As a second-generation Asian American woman, she is interested in the impact of cultural myths on preconceptions about ethnicity and social inheritance; how nature, land, and the urban environment act as symbols of national identity, as well as private markers of time and place. By relocating these myths as sculptural bodies within local environments, new metaphors, meanings and narratives emerge. For more information, visit Huang’s website.
Vivian Sangsukwirasathien is a Miami-born bicultural (Chinese/Thai) independent curator and creative director. Her projects focus on themes of otherness, migration, and how personal voices and experiences can translate across different people and mediums while exploring expanding fields of contemporary cultural production. Vivian has worked in the arts for the last 10 years with Sotheby’s, The Armory Show, Art Basel Miami Beach, Asia Week New York, and the Shanghai Museum.
Special thanks to the Windgate Foundation for generously supporting this program.