Duality and Dokdo, Lone Island: Exhibit Opening Reception

The Asian American Resource Center is proud to host an exhibit reception featuring works from artists Dan Pham (The Banana’s Identity Cookbook), Lauren Chai (A Place in this World), and Matthew Koshmrl (Dokdo, Lone Island).

This event is FREE to attend and refreshments and light snacks will be served.

For more information, please visit here or contact Asian American Resource Center at 512.974.1700.

Duality

In their vibrant paintings, artists Lauren Chai and Dan Pham explore the duality of identity as Asian Americans. Incorporating motifs derived from their lives, Pham’s the Banana’s Identity Cookbook and Chai’s A Place in this World expresses the desires of finding balance between two worlds. These exhibits are part of the Asian American Resource Center’s Community Art Exhibition Program.

The Banana’s Identity Cookbook, Dan Pham

The Banana's Identity Cookbook serves as a visual diary for Dan Pham to tell a story or event in her life as a way to exam her ongoing fascination with dual identity, socialization, and how food is culturally constructed. Growing up feeling “too Asian for Americans” and “too white for Asians,” Pham seeks a space in between though her artwork.

A Place in this World, Lauren Chai

In A Place in this World, Lauren Chai uses mixed media to bring together different elements as a reflection of her identity, a clash of traditional and modern, eastern and western and the struggle for balance. Chai paints issues such as taboo, feminism, sexuality, violation and oppression. She also explores the abstract Korean cultural innate trait called "Han."

Dokdo, Lone Island, Matthew Koshmrl

The goal of DOKDO-AUSTIN is to bring the island of Dokdo to Austin. The dispute of Dokdo is ongoing and still very present in modern Korean popular culture. Every year thousands of Koreans make the eight-hour journey by boat for a mere 15 minute visit to the symbolic island, before getting back on the return ferry to the mainland.

Dokdo can be found in children's textbooks, in the lyrics of K-pop songs, and often used as a political tool by politicians. The irony of the small island is that it is less than 50 acres, has no inhabitants, no exploitable resourcesm and no tangible importance. More than anything else, the significance of Dokdo is purely symbolic, a vestige of the dark period in Japanese/Korean history. And yet, each year thousands of Koreans go through great lengths to visit and pay homage to the island.

The exhibition will be on display July 13 - September 23.