Part 2 of an exhibit I am so excited about it on display at the Queens Museum. You may remember the Shades of Time Exhibition I blogged about a while back (which you can see HERE). Part 2's opening reception was just last week thanks to the AHL Foundation in collaboration with Korean Cultural Service of New York. It's titled:
Community Partnership Exhibition Program
Shades of Time: An Exhibition from the Archive of Korean American Artists, Part Two, 1989-2001
While Part One focused on Korean artists who arrived in the US from 1955 to 1989, Part two showcases materials from the Archive of Korean American Artists by the AHL Foundation since 2012. This exhibition presents a group of younger generations who set up their studios and started a professional career in the late 1980s and the 1990s and include a wide range of media such as video, mixed media, computer-graphics, and installations. Curators selected about 45 artists among more than 200 Korean American artists of this generation. Selection was based on the merit of their art works and their contribution to contemporary art.
As witnesses of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this new era of artists arriving in the US from Korea in the early 1990s dreamed of a world without barriers, communicable through common artistic languages. This younger generation tested the boundaries with their innovative ideas and methods. But at the same time Asian communities in the US, including Korean immigrants, were fraught with racial tensions with other ethnic groups, such as the 1990 Red Apple Boycott in Brooklyn . In the midst of the gentrification of urban areas, artists pursued public art projects that would raise social awareness. With a fresh perspective of multiculturalism made popular in the 1990s, artists pursued a long quest to shape their unique cultural identities.
I am so proud to help sponsor this event, as I see myself as an extension of these artists now working in NYC. The exhibit will run through July 20th so if you can make your way over to The Queens Museum in the New York City Building at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, it's well worth your time!
