In February 2020, curator and gallery director Kathy Huang met artist Dominique Fung-one month before the COVID-19 Pandemie closed everything. Their conversations, which continue in the quarantine, served as a boost for what would be Huang’s Wonder women Exhibitions in Jeffrey DeCh.
During their chats, Huang and Fung complained “the increase in violence to Asian American communities, especially to women and the elderly,” says Huang in the introduction to her upcoming book, Wonder women: Art of the Asian diaspora.
The two also found it difficult to determine when the last major exhibition was performed that carefully presented Asian artists, and neither could come up with a case in which women and non -frombino artists had been the focus. Both exhibitions by Huang and its new book are the fruit of that desire to emphasize the remarkable spectrum of figurative work that is being produced today within the Asian Diaosporian community.
A reaction to racism against Asians exacerbated by the COVID-19 Pandemie, Huang came up with the shows that could be seen in New York and Los Angeles in 2022 as a means to emphasize the incredible, groundbreaking work that was made specially made by women and non-binary artists.
Come from rizzoli, Wonder women Share a similar title as a poem by Genny Lim, which follows the experiences of Asian women through the lens of a narrator who observes their daily routines and considering how their lives relates to her.
Huang extends to this vision in its approach to present the work of forty artists, each represented by at least four pieces and a personal statement. These artists “undermine stereotypes and claim their identity in places where they are historically marginalized,” says Rizzoli.
Artists such as Sasha Gordon or Nadia Waheed explore identity by sometimes fantastic self-portraits, while others emphasize family, community and colonial or patriarchal systems in the West. Some focus on Asian myths, legends and visual culture, such as fung’s exploration of antique objects or the alien scenes of Shyama Golden in which hybrid human animals interact with nature or urban spaces.
Wonder women is released on May 20. Order your copy at the Colossal.
