My identity as an artist is revealed through my relations with other artists, writers, thinkers, and doers. Being part of this web enables me to share my work as well as support the work of my chosen family. I have utilized these connections in an attempt to build a structure for the apprehension of our work, which has not had a proper context. I am holding up and naming our community in the hope of bringing our work into focus.
Many of us operate with a strong belief that culture comes through community—an artist might be an individual working in a studio, but much of our important and joyful work is with and for others. The artists in SCRATCHING AT THE MOON—utilizing photography, assemblage, site-specific intervention, material experimentation, installation, and video—create in mutual support and in rejection of market-based competition, so our art is also about friendship. SCRATCHING AT THE MOON is for those of us who build culture through our teaching, conversation, and collaboration. The exhibition has had an organic evolution, capturing the trajectory of people moving through time and practice together. — Anna Sew Hoy*
As part of ICA LA’s Triple Catalogue Launch Party, join artist-curator Anna Sew Hoy to celebrate the publication of the SCRATCHING AT THE MOON exhibition catalogue, an inside look at this landmark show. The first group exhibition of Asian American artists in a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, SCRATCHING AT THE MOON features the work of Patty Chang, Young Chung, Vishal Jugdeo, Simon Leung, Michelle Lopez, Yong Soon Min, Na Mira, Amanda Ross-Ho, Miljohn Ruperto, Dean Sameshima, Amy Yao, Bruce Yonemoto, and Sew Hoy.
Designed by Dorothée Perret and co-published by ICA LA and DoPe Press, this full-color volume includes revelatory artist conversations, commissioned essays by Kris Kuramitsu, John Tain, and Sarah Wang that contextualize the exhibition, a curators’ essay by ICA LA director Anne Ellegood and Sew Hoy, artist entries by Caroline Ellen Liou, Amanda Sroka, and Ellegood, and extensive visual documentation of the artists’ work and praxis over the decades.
The event will also launch the exhibition catalogues Rebecca Morris: 2001–2022 and Barbara T. Smith: Proof, with both artists as well as curator Jenelle Porter in attendance.
See info and link below for details.
ICA LA TRIPLE CATALOGUE LAUNCH PARTY
Scratching at the Moon
Rebecca Morris: 2001-2022
Barbara T. Smith: Proof
Saturday, April 27, from 11 am to 1 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art
1717 East 7th Street, Los Angeles
theicala.org/triple-catalogue-launch-party
*Anna Sew Hoy, “To See an Expanse,” in Anne Ellegood and Anna Sew Hoy, Scratching at the Moon, exhibition catalogue (Los Angeles: ICA LA; DoPe Press, 2024), 13.
Anne Ellegood and Anna Sew Hoy, Scratching at the Moon, exhibition catalogue (Los Angeles: ICA LA; DoPe Press, 2024), from top: Simon Leung, Act 2 : An Opera by Luke Stoneham and Simon Leung, 2024, from The Side of the Mountain series, 1998–ongoing, single-channel video (color, sound, 35 min.) installation, courtesy Simon Leung; Patty Chang, Touch Ritual, 2021, photograph by Aleksija Neimanis, We Are All Mothers, 2022, from Learning Endings series, 2021–ongoing, single-channel video (color, sound, 20:02 min.), five tables with snapshots, courtesy Patty Chang; Young Chung, Not By Birth series, 1996/2023, archival pigment prints mounted to Dibond, lacquered aluminum frames, [left image, Ssaem, portrays Yong Soon Min (1953–2024), Chung’s USC Irvine professor and Scratching at the Moon artist], courtesy Young Chung and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, Mexico City; Anna Sew Hoy, Shards, 2023, courtesy Anna Sew Hoy and Commonwealth and Council; Vishal Jugdeo and Miljohn Ruperto, Cut Line, 2024, from Caribbean Television series, 2023–ongoing, three-channel 4K video (color, single-channel audio, 26 min.), courtesy Vishal Jugdeo and Miljohn Ruperto; Michelle Lopez, documentation of the artist’s studio, courtesy Michelle Lopez; Dean Sameshima, Erdbeermund series, nos. 4 and 5, 2023, archival ink jet prints, courtesy Dean Sameshima, Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles, and Soft Opening, London; Bruce Yonemoto, ENKA!, 2016, single-channel video (color, sound, 3:53 min.), [Yonemoto, left in black t-shirt, filming Kaz Oshiro], courtesy Bruce Yonemoto; Amy Yao, Untitled, 2016–2023, courtesy Amy Yao.
Scratching at the Moon exhibition catalogue images courtesy and © ICA LA and DoPe Press.
All artwork images © the artists.
