P E R F O R M A N C E A N D R E A D I N G S

KIOTO AOKI is an artist and educator using the material specificity of the analogue image and image-making process to explore modes of perception as a politics of vision. Forming a rhetoric of nuanced quietude, her work oscillates between the still and moving image engage mechanisms of structural tangibility and site-specificity. 

As a musician, Kioto descends from the Toyoakimoto performing arts family in Tokyo with roots dating back to the Edo period. Studying under her Tokyo-born father, Kioto is carrying on the artistic family lineage in Chicago as sole professional taiko artist in the city. She has been performing on stage since the age of 7 and also plays shamisen and tsuzumi. Kioto plays in both traditional and contemporary musical contexts and is active within the experimental and creative music communities in Chicago and the Bay Area. She also leads the National Gintenkai Project – the performance unit within Tsukasa Taiko, the Japanese drumming program at Asian Improv aRts Midwest.  

Musical projects include Yoko Ono’s SKYLANDING, Tatsu Aoki’s The MIYUMI Project, The Reduction Ensemble, and the Taiko Legacy / Reduction series at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Kioto is also a multi-year Ethnic and Folk Arts Master Apprentice Program Awardee from the Illinois Arts Council. Curatorial projects include the ongoing Chicago Obihiro Exchange Project and Shikoukairo: Patterns of Thought: Patterns of Thought which reframes the conversation around Asian & Asian-American cultural diegesis in the arts. Kioto’s solo exhibition, Kioto Aoki: Breathe, Fibres of Paper Past is currently on view at the Museum of Surgical Science.

JENNIFER CHEN-SU HUANG is an artist and writer whose process-driven works interweave elements of craft tradition, language, history, and memoir. She is a 2021 Luminarts Fellow and a current artist-in-residence at Chicago Artists Coalition's HATCH program. In 2017-2018, she completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan, where she was a Research Fellow with the Ethnology Department at National Chengchi University, as well as a Visiting Artist at Tainan National University of the Arts. She graduated with her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2018, she presented her research at the Textile Society of America's biennial symposium and was selected for the New Professional Award. Huang has exhibited internationally at Haiton Art Center in Taipei and across the United States at Untitled Prints and Editions in Los Angeles, Kearny St. Workshop in San Francisco, and Gallery 400 in Chicago, among others.

You can catch her work in the exhibitions Shikoukairo III: Patterns of Thought at the Zhou B Art Center, I Don't Wanna Be Lonely at Fluffy Crimes, and LtdWear5: Everyone's a Chef opening at LVL3 on June 5th, as well as at Buddy in the Chicago Cultural Center, where she has teamed up with GnarWare to create a limited edition line of textile and ceramic wares for Buddy MFG.

ALEX JEN is a writer and curator based in Chicago. His criticism and personal essays on photography, architecture and poetry have appeared in Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, Gulf Coast, Hyperallergic and other venues, and he is working on an exhibition with Max Guy that will open at Produce Model in June. A graduate of Williams College, Jen is currently the Special Assistant to the President and Director at The Art Institute of Chicago.

DAO NGUYEN is a Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist. Their name is a homophone for the Vietnamese word for knife. They are the compact, red Leatherman multi-tool your aunt gave you for Christmas ten years ago. On sale at Marshall’s. Versatility and hidden strength in a small package at a discount. Stealthy enough to pass through security checkpoints on three continents on four separate occasions. They can cut, screw, file, saw, and open your beer. Bonus applications include carving miniature graphite figurines, picking locks, and sculpting tofu.

They have exhibited and performed in backyards, bathrooms, stairwells, highways, white cubes, and black box spaces, including Sector 2337, Defibrillator, the MCA, Hyde Park Art Center, Sullivan Galleries, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Brea Art Gallery, The Foundry Arts Centre, and Irvine Fine Arts Center. They received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was Artist-in-Residence at ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, Elsewhere: A Living Museum, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.

P A N E L C O N V E R S A T I O N

JAMES KAO is a Chicago-based artist who makes paintings and drawings. He is co-founder and co-director of 4th Ward Project Space in Chicago, IL. 

LARRY LEE is a multimedia artist, independent curator and writer who earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he also teaches Art History, Theory and Criticism and Contemporary Practices.

S.Y LIM is a Chicago-based artist who lives and works between Gwang Ju, Seoul, South Korea, and Chicago. (She was a Korean Pop singer before moving to Chicago with the stage name Lumi-L). She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. She is a founder of 062, a non-profit art gallery in Bridgeport.

HƯƠNG NGÔ is an artist born in Hong Kong and based in Chicago where she is an Assistant Professor in Contemporary Practices at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Beginning her studies as a biology major, she received her BFA at the UNC-CH (2001) and continued in Art & Technology Studies at the SAIC (MFA, 2004). Her research and archive-based practice began while a studio fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2012. She was recently awarded the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant in Vietnam (2016) to realize a project, begun at the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer in France, recently exhibited at DePaul Art Museum (2017), and continued through the Camargo Core Program (2018), that examines the colonial history of surveillance in Vietnam and the anti-colonial strategies of resistance vis-à-vis the activities of female organizers and liaisons. Her work (solo and collaborative with Hồng-Ân Trương), described as “deftly and defiantly decolonial” by New City and “what intersectional feminist art looks like” by the Chicago Tribune, has exhibited at the MoMA, MCA Chicago, Nhà Sàn Collective, The Factory Contemporary Art Centre HCMC, Para Site HK, among others. She was recently awarded the 3Arts Next Level Award and will participate in upcoming Prospect.5.

PATRICK 'Q' QUILAO (he/him) is a Filipinx American artist and arts administrator based in Chicago, IL since 2008. Q received his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Studio through Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC); and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Studio from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Q currently serves as Associate Director of Graduate Admissions at SAIC and has supported and juried for organizations including Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE) in Chicago, IL and Steuben, WI; and Ox-Bow School of Art in Chicago, IL and Saugatuck, MI.

Born in Los Angeles, CA and grew up in Cerritos, CA and Las Vegas, NV. An avid supporter of emerging artists, art initiatives, and artists-run spaces, Q frequents exhibitions, lectures, readings, screenings, or performances in Chicago; and nationally and internationally when his travels take him there. Follow him on IG: @greetings_q

ADRIAN WONG was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois in 1980. Originally trained in psychology (MA, Stanford ‘03), he began making and exhibiting work in San Francisco while concurrently conducting research in developmental linguistics. He continued his post-graduate studies in sculpture (MFA, Yale ‘05). Wong relocated his studio to Hong Kong in 2005, but recently returned to Chicago, where he currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited at The Drawing Center (New York), Kuandu Museum (Taipei), Kunsthalle Wien, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunstverein (Hamburg), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), Palazzo Reale (Milan), Saatchi Gallery (London), and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam)—and can be found in public and private collections worldwide, including the 21C Collection (Chicago), DSL Foundation (Paris), K11 Art Foundation (Shanghai), Kadist Foundation (San Francisco), M+ Museum (Hong Kong), Sifang Museum (Nanjing), and the Uli Sigg Collection (Lucerne).

S P E C I A L R E M A R K S & M U S I C P L A Y L I S T

SANGINI BRAHMBHATT (she/her/hers)is the Director of Development at Asian Americans Advancing Justice|Chicago. She has a deep understanding of the philanthropic and nonprofit sector in Chicago. Previously, Sangini worked in development in the arts at Arts Alliance Illinois, Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), amongst other civic engagement and social services organizations.

Sangini is an alumni of Cultivate: Women of Color in Leadership program. Cultivate seeks to build a cadre of emerging women of color leaders engaged in social, economic, and racial justice movements in Chicago’s region. She is a committee member of Edgar Miller Legacy and emeritus board member of Latitude Chicago.

A first-generation Indian, Sangini resides in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, and is a novice art collector.

@sangini - Twitter

@sanginib - FB / IG

OLIVER SHAO is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His primary research focuses on music and humanitarian border politics in East Africa. He is also working on a new research project about the music and lived experiences of rappers of Asian descent in the US.