Spirit House
The first of a series of AAAI-related books the Cantor Art Museum produced to foster scholarship on Asian American art and to introduce leading Asian American artists to wider audiences. It is edited by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, with contributions from Kathryn Cua, and features many previously unpublished works. The publication includes an essay by preeminent Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and four ghost stories by artists in the exhibition.
Spirit House is a significant exhibition related to the museum’s Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) that investigates how contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art. A thematic exploration of the work of thirty-three Asian American and Asian diasporic artists, Spirit House asks the question, what does it mean to speak to ghosts, inhabit haunted spaces, be reincarnated, or enter different dimensions? Inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures found throughout Thailand that provide shelter for the supernatural, this exhibition considers how art can bridge the gap between this world and the next.
Here, contemporary artists reckon with the spiritual and spectral in our visual culture and question the many forms that ghosts can take. In foregrounding intuitive and inherited forms of knowledge, these artists challenge the primacy of data-driven, scientific methods of understanding the world around us.
Artists include: Kelly Akashi, Korakrit Arunanondchai, James Clar, Maia Cruz Palileo, Binh Danh, Dominique Fung, Pao Houa Her, Greg Ito, Tommy Kha, Heesoo Kwon, Timothy Lai, An-My Lê, Dinh Q. Lê, Kang Seung Lee, Tidawhitney Lek, Jarod Lew, Reagan Louie, Cathy Lu, Nina Molloy, Tammy Nguyen, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Catalina Ouyang, Namita Paul, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, Kour Pour, Jiab Prachakul, Stephanie H. Shih, Do Ho Suh, Masami Teraoka, Salman Toor, Lien Truong, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Wanxin Zhang.
Made in L.A. Acts of Living
Edited with text by Diana Nawi, Pablo José Ramírez, Ashton Cooper. Foreword by Ann Philbin. Delmonico Books
The sixth iteration of the Los Angeles biennial, highlighting themes of the vernacular, the urban, the performative and the collective
Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living features the work of 39 artists and groups. It takes its cues from the ethos of the city and situates art as an expanded field of culture that is entangled with the everyday, community networks, queer affect, and indigenous and diasporic histories. Proposing a network of artistic affinities through intergenerational constellations, Made in L.A. 2023 investigates shared visual and material languages. The exhibition will focus on ways of working that center vernacular aesthetics, urban visual culture and domestic intimacy, materials and processes that are rooted in tradition, and archival and collective practices. These artists suggest art can be an act of preservation and memorialization as well as a space for playfulness, satire, and sheer wildness.
Artists include: Marcel Alcalá, Michael Alvarez, AMBOS, Jackie Amézquita, Teresa Baker, Luis Bermudez, Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, Jibz Cameron, Melissa Cody, Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Victor Estrada, Nancy Evans, Jessie Homer French, Pippa Garner, Ishi Glinsky, Vincent Enrique Hernandez, Dan Herschlein, Akinsanya Kambon, Kyle Kilty, Young Joon Kwak, Kang Seung Lee, Tidawhitney Lek, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Maria Maea, Erica Mahinay, Mas Exitos, Dominique Moody, Paige Jiyoung Moon, Esteban Ramón Pérez, Page Person, Roksana Pirouzmand, Ryan Preciado, Devin Reynolds, Miller Robinson, Guadalupe Rosales, Christopher Suarez, Joey Terrill, Chiffon Thomas, Teresa Tolliver.