The Asian American Resource Center (AARC) presents Diane Chiyon Hong's artist talk and workshop: The Uncanny and Social Critique in Contemporary Art. Learn more about Diane Chiyon Hong's unique body of work, her artist practice, and her exhibit: Vessels - Handle with Care (on-view at the AARC until July 5th, 2024). Diane Chiyon Hong will be leading participants in a hands-on drawing workshop focusing in on techniques she used to produce her work for Vessels. Space is limited, RSVPs required, light refreshments will be provided.
About the Exhibit:
Vessels - Handle With Care consists of drawings that examine East Asian cultural representation and iconography. By engaging with common tropes, she embarks on the process of reclaiming some part of the narrative and aims to open up space for dialogue and new perspectives.
In these drawings, signifiers that are commonly associated with East Asian culture such as noodle bowls, traditional clothing, hairstyles, and other paraphernalia are humorously intermingled with human figures. Playful juxtapositions of objects and figures create images that are at once endearing and unsettling. She utilizes humor as a subversive tool, and grapples with the complexity of Asian cultural identity by light-heartedly poking fun at the enterprise of stereotyping.
As a person of Asian descent who has lived most of her life in the West, Hong uses these cultural signifiers represented in her work to convey ideas of comfort, home, and tradition that are deeply embedded in childhood memories. These drawings are rendered with great care, alluding to the precious quality of the subject matter. The title of the exhibit refers to the functional objects that are depicted as well as to the human body, which is itself a vessel that holds experiences and memories.
Artist Bio:
Diane Chiyon Hong is an artist and an architect whose work explores the uncanny nature of the ordinary through drawings and paintings. Her recent work focuses on drawings that depict everyday scenes that do not always follow the rules of representational reality. Her work questions the solidity of the world that we experience and reflects on the themes of uncertainty and unpredictability.
Diane Chiyon Hong was born in Seoul, South Korea (1969) and raised in São Paulo, Brasil and New York City, USA. She studied fine arts at the Fiorello LaGuardia School of the Arts in New York City and holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and a Master of Science in Architectural Design from Columbia University. She currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.
Asian American Resource Center
8401 Cameron Road
Austin, TX 78754
United States