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Center Gallery, Media Gallery, Focus GallerySelected Works
Alfonso Ossorio, Untitled, 1941, ink on paper. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Museum Purchase: Barbara Cooney Porter Fund. Reproduced with the permission of The Ossorio Foundation and Nicole A. Vanasse.
Hung Liu, Miss Fortune, 1995, silkscreen. Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Archival Collection of Marion Boulton Stroud and Acadia Summer Arts Program, Mt. Desert Island, Maine. Gift from the Marion Boulton "Kippy" Stroud Foundation, 2018.10.5. © 2023 Hung Liu Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Mel Chin, Self-Portrait (Bison and Hare), 1996, hard ground etching and aquatint on paper. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Anonymous Gift and Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund. Courtesy of the artist.
Shahzia Sikander, Ready to Leave, Series II, 1997, vegetable color and watercolor on wasil paper. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Museum Purchase, Laura T. and John H. Halford, Jr. Art Acquisition Fund. © Shahzia Sikander, Courtesy, Sean Kelly.
Stephanie Syjuco, Applicant Photos (Migrants) #2, 2016, archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Baryta paper. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, The Philip Conway Beam Endowment Fund. © Stephanie Syjuco; Courtesy of the artist, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
Stephanie H. Shih, Red Snapper, 2023, painted ceramic. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Museum Purchase. Courtesy of the artist and Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco. Photo: Robert Bredvad
About
This exhibition spotlights the vibrancy and diversity of Asian American artistic expressions over the past century. The Asian American artists featured in the exhibition—including Tomie Arai, Mel Chin, Hung Liu, Chiura Obata, Alfonso Ossorio, Patrick Nagatani, Stephanie H. Shih, Roger Shimomura, and Shahzia Sikander—reclaim and reframe racialized narratives of the past, explore the legacies of these histories on their present identities, and forecast alternative visions of the future. Collectively, the works of art underscore experiences of imperialism and displacement, economic and political discrimination, and broken cultural and familial lineages. But they equally illustrate the boldly playful and imaginative energies of Asian American artists, highlighting the resilience of Asian American communities that continually envision new futures and possibilities of belonging.
This exhibition was co-curated by Bowdoin faculty members Connie Y. Chiang, Shruti Devgan, Belinda Kong, Nancy E. Riley, and Shu-chin Tsui, with curatorial support from Cassandra Braun, Sabrina Lin, and Emily Pratt ’24.
Support for the exhibition is provided by the Lowell Innes Fund, Bowdoin College.