(Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings Features Seven Asian Artists at ReflectSpace Gallery

Glendale Library, Arts & Culture and ReflectSpace Gallery will present (Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings, an exhibition featuring artists from Los Angeles, Korea and China, opening July 27. The exhibition delves into the multi-generational afterlives of war, displacement and East-West Asian diasporic placemaking through maps, sculptures, photography, archives, video and layered artistic mediums. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 27 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm, welcoming guests to view the exhibition for the first time.

Anchored by the work of Los Angeles-based artists Annette Miae Kim and Kyong Boon Oh, (Be)Longing asks the audience to consider how diasporic histories and spaces are created and narrated. The works engages viewers with questions including:

Is it possible to draw the borders of belonging? 

How does one make a map of a transnational and borderless community? 

How much do histories of displacement and war enter the contemporary narrative of a community?

What is the relationship of a diasporic community to its indigenous lands and history? 

Kim and Oh have families in both South Korea and North Korea, and these fraught cultural histories bring a personal and poignant dimension to their work. They query and challenge societal preconceptions about diasporas and borders through maps, archives, sculpture and tactile materiality.

Four artists from Korea and China—Sun Siran, Xia Yan, Gil Woong Kim and Donah Lee—meditate their diasporic journeys and relationship to homelands with newly commissioned video work. Los Angeles-based contemporary ceramicist Jennifer Cheh reflects on her diasporic present by reaching back into traditional Korean forms. All seven artists in the exhibition grapple with their diasporic histories and present-day and strive to articulate their own sense of being and belonging. Featured artists in (Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings include Annette Miae Kim, Kyong Boon Oh, Sun Siran, Xia Yan, Gil Woong Kim, Donah Lee and Jennifer Cheh. The exhibition is curated by Monica Hye Yeon Jun and Ara & Anahid Oshagan.

(Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings will be on view from July 27 through September 22 at ReflectSpace Gallery, inside Glendale Central Library located at 222 East Harvard, Glendale, CA, 91205.