‘(Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings’ exhibit opens July 27

“(Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings,” an exhibition from Glendale Library, Arts & Culture and ReflectSpace Gallery, delves into the multi-generational afterlives of war and displacement and East-West Asian diasporic placemaking through maps, sculptures, photography, archives, video, and layered materiality. It features artists from Los Angeles, Korea, and China.

Anchored by the work of Los Angeles-based artists Annette Miae Kim and Kyong Boon Oh, “(Be)Longing” asks us to consider how diasporic histories and spaces are created and narrated. Can you draw the borders of belonging? How do you make a map of a transnational and borderless community? How much do histories of displacement and war enter the contemporary narrative of a community? What is the relationship of a diasporic community to its indigenous lands and history? Kim and Oh have family in both South Korea and North Korea, and these fraught familial histories brings a personal and poignant dimension to their work. They query and challenge our preconceptions about diasporas and borders through maps, archives, sculpture, and tactile materiality.

Four artists from Korea and China—Sun Siran, Xia Yan, Gil Woong Kim, and Donah Lee—meditate their diasporic journeys and relationship to homelands with newly commissioned video work. Los Angeles-based contemporary ceramicist Jennifer Cheh reflects on her diasporic present by reaching back into traditional Korean forms.

All seven artists in the exhibition grapple with their diasporic histories and present-day and strive to articulate their own sense of being and belonging.

“(Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings” will be on view from through Sept. 22, 2024 at ReflectSpace Gallery, inside Glendale Central Library located at 222 E. Harvard, Glendale, CA, 91205. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 27, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.