Artist Tina Scepanovic’s exhibited work is composed of vintage chandelier elements arranged in dissonant frequencies that create a united front. Photo by Angela Hau
In the Mix
Upon Further Reflection
A special NYCxDesign exhibition shines a light on today’s prolific female-identifying AAPI design community
Amid the excitement of this year’s NYCxDesign festival—and there has been plenty!—we’ve been especially moved by Upon Further Reflection, an inspiring group show celebrating the depth of talent that exists within today’s female-identifying AAPI design community. Featuring works by 20 outstanding designers and artists across a range of media, the exhibition honors the diverse narratives that exist within the community while exploring the charged concepts of mirroring and reflection—ideas of particular importance to the broader AAPI community, “who,” as organizers note, “has struggled to be seen within the historically white-centric United States.”
The show is co-curated by Lora Appleton of Female Design Council and Andrea Hill of Tortuga Forma, and presented in partnership with the Asian American Pacific Islander Design Alliance (AAPIDA) and 3.1 Phillip Lim.
As Appleton explains, in preparing for the show: “We asked the artists and designers questions like: How do you see yourself? and How do others see you?” The responses were as varied as their makers. Standouts include, among others, Rosie Li’s Rainbow Bubbly lamp, coated in ever-shifting rainbow hues that demand a closer look; Soft Geometry’s Mirrors for Aliens, a twist on the traditional thali—a ubiquitous dish in Indian households and restaurants—made of mirrored steel that serves as a metaphor for the designers’ “blurred sense of identity and the complex emotional landscape that comes with living between cultures, countries, home and work;” and Caroline Chao’s You Are Infinite, a wooden mirrored vanity work that is part wunderkammer, part “zushi” shrine—whereby “a seemingly empty box is filled with reflections of infinite ways to see oneself.”
Hill observes, “The title, Upon Further Reflection, was an invitation to the participants—and now viewers—to rethink Asian identity as shaped by growing up in the United States. Some of the artists—like Moving Mountains, Ti Chang, and Caroline Chao—used the form of a vanity but created layers of complexity through materiality and formal languages. Other artists like Soft Geometry, Teruko Kushi, and Urvi Sharma made gazing mirrors that concealed or distorted more than they showed or revealed.” And still “others like Jane Yang D'Haene took a conceptual approach by using glaze work and surface experimentation to honor and reflect on traditional Korean moon jars.”
The organizers hope the show not only celebrates this incredible wealth of talent, but also encourages meaningful dialogue within the larger design community, offering much-needed space for “further reflection.”
On view through May 25
at 31. Phillip Lim / 48 Great Jones Street, NYC
Featuring work by: Ellen Pong, Rosie Li, Soft Geometry, Jialun Xiong, Moving Mountains, Windy Chien,Ti Chang, Susan Maddux, Jean Pelle, Lynn Lin, Teruko Kushi, Caroline Chao, Tina Scepanovic, Pooja Pawaskar, Bowen Liu, Jean Lee, Urvi Sharma, Virginia Sin, Wu Hanyen
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