Join us Saturday November 16 for a program in conjunction with the exhibition Jia Sung: Chaos, Whims, Lust with Christina Ko, Catalina Ouyang, and Larissa Pham. Each artist will present a piece of writing or body of artwork that expands on themes within Chaos, Whims, Lust, followed by a conversation with Sung.

Catalina Ouyang will read a lyric essay that takes up Journey to the West as a framing conceit. Christina Ko will discuss her body of artworks as they relate to themes in the exhibition such as a hero’s journey and the role of the female figure, subversive space, and the title Chaos, Whims, Lust. Larissa Pham will read from Fantasian, her 2016 novella dealing with themes of identity formation, Asian-American womanhood, and duplicity.

About the Exhibition
Chaos, Whims, Lust is an exhibition by artist Jia Sung that examines the role of the female trickster figure, replacing canonized patriarchal motifs in folklore with narratives of sisterhood, matriarchy, and rebellion. Comprised of over fifty figurative ink and gouache drawings accompanied by handwritten verse and prose poetry, the exhibition takes the form of a spatialized book that reads from right to left around the gallery space.

About the Presenters
Christina Ko is a Korean American artist living and working in Queens, NY. She received her BFA from Cornell University in 2013 and has since then shown her work in Los Angeles, CA, Washington D.C., and in around NYC. Selected exhibitions include: “Downloading Place”, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY (2019); “Fever Lure”, Selenas Mountain Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2019); “Crossover: East and West”, Korean Cultural Center, Washington D.C. (2018), and “Nightcall”, Public Address Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2017). Her work has also been featured in Gallery Gurls, the Arcade Project Zine, Hiss Magazine, The Fader magazine, The Washington Post, and Ballpit Magazine.

Catalina Ouyang is a visual artist and child of the Chinese diaspora by way of St. Louis, New Jersey, and a cul-de-sac outside of Chicago. Her non-disciplinary practice spans sculpture, text, installation, performance, video, and participatory projects, among other modalities, exploring the interstices of myth, desire, subjugation, and monstrosity. Ouyang has had solo exhibitions at Rubber Factory (New York, NY), Selena Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Make Room (Los Angeles, CA), Trestle Projects (Brooklyn, NY), the Millitzer Gallery (St. Louis, MO), and fort gondo compound for the arts (St. Louis, MO). Her work has been included in group exhibitions internationally, including at Helena Anrather (New York, NY), fffriedrich (Frankfurt, Germany), like a little disaster (Polignano a Mare, Italy), Anonymous Gallery (Mexico City, Mexico), projects+gallery (St. Louis, Missouri), No Place (Columbus, Ohio), and Gallery 400 (Chicago, IL). She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University.

Larissa Pham is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn. She is the author of Fantasian (Badlands Unlimited 2016). Pham is the “Devil in the Details” columnist at the Paris Review Daily, and has published essays and criticism in POETRY, The Nation, Art in America, Guernica, Bookforum, Village Voice, and elsewhere. In 2017, Pham was an inaugural Yi Dae Up fellowship recipient from the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. She has taught with the Asian American Writers Workshop and Kundiman.