002 Fusion
May 10 - May 30, 2025
The BLANC, 15 E 40 Street, Floor 2, New York, NY
Opening Reception: May 10, 1:30-6 PM
Panel Discussion: May 24, 2-4 PM
Artists:
Anh Nguyen, Felisa Nguyen, Huyen Tran
With Open Kitchen’s second exhibition “Fusion,” artists Anh Nguyen, Felisa Nguyen, and Huyen Tran jointly create an installation with existing works or their parts and variations that support each other, structurally and conceptually. The structures will be free-standing systems that only use each other’s works as foundations, “pillars,” “frames,” “walls,” and “floors,” without any exterior contacts except for resting on the gallery floor. This act calls for Asian contemporary art’s condition in the West as it sustains viability only via communal support and lacks much systematic and institutional interaction with the “surroundings.”
The title of the piece is presented in a frame, with its institutionalized “Western” title on the viewer-facing side, and the authentic individual titles of all participating works and their parts detailed on the flip side which requires efforts to decipher.
The installation aims to generate a two-fold interpretive system: inspecting from the inside, each element by the three artists holds a unique position and meaning if one looks carefully enough. Looking from the outside, through a typical Western lens, the installation will appear as an “Asian-looking” installation, with each maker’s unique identity camouflaged, challenging the condition that heterogeneity within Asian cultures is often overlooked and generalized into a much more palatable “Asianness.”
Echoing Li Tang’s fifth-year anniversary as an Asian community, the project inspects the very definition and position of a community. Whether treated exteriorly as a wholesome unity that highlights its defining borders or studied interiorly by the membering individuals that deliver heterogeneity, a community balances the shared quality with what is not shared. A thorough understanding of this dynamic balance might be the most important prerequisite for a healthy and ever-evolving outlook.
[This project was a part of Independent Curatorial Projects celebrating Li Tang Community’s Fifth Year Anniversary. Special thanks to Webson and Linda for making this exhibition possible]
Photos by Anh Nguyen