Exhibitions

While the Doug Adams Gallery is out of use, we are using our beautiful ground floor window (2465 LeConte Ave. Berkeley) to highlight some of the Bay Area's talented artists of color!

This April, don’t miss the work of artist Ahn Lee!

Ahn Lee is a nonbinary, queer Cantonese artist and researcher. Their interdisciplinary practice of ceramics, media and performance relies on a combined methodology of autobiographical re-making and research on the Cantonese diaspora. As an artist of Sunwui (Xinhui) descent, Ahn explores their ancestral roots to this contested site of capitalism and imperialism through leveraging archival research historiography, critical race, and gender theory. Ahn is currently pursuing their MFA at UC Berkeley.

Ahn's installation, a patch of sky, explores the silkworm as a conduit and the cocoon as a portal. Translucent porcelain surgical face masks, each about 1-2 mm thick, are glazed with a hand-mixed original Jun glaze. This body of work aims to create a present Chinese folklore that tells of a future where we can emerge from this moment of racial violence amidst a global pandemic with power and grace. It is a wishful project in which Ahn is able to process Chinese American history through porcelain – an ancestral material and technique that precedes our lifetimes and will exist long after.

Individual masks are available for purchase at a-z-lee.com/purchase

What is the relationship between the silkworm and the mask?

I think about creating a Chinese folklore that tells of a future where we can emerge from this moment of racial violence amidst a global pandemic with power and grace. cocoon hopes to both protect and empower my ancestry to emerge anew.

This body of work is a wishful project in which I process the hysterics of our history through porcelain - a material that precedes our lifetimes and will exist long after we are gone.

What relics will remain of this pandemic after our lives have ended?

What marks of this global trauma will be passed on?

How can we transform the object of the mask, a symbol of protection and of global trauma, as a powerful relic for future transformation?

How can we, in the present, transform our future?

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This window exhibition features work by a different artist every month, so be sure to keep an eye out for whose work to expect next!

Watch a recording of January's panel discussion with Art Window artists Ora Clay, Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo, and Shirin Khalatbari