CHAIN LETTERS
In an effort to continue a conversation initiated by artist Christopher K. Ho and curator Daisy Nam with their anthology of correspondences, Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts, CHART has extended the prompts from Ho and Nam’s book to the participating artists in 8 Americans and asked them to both submit letters about their own personal experiences and to invite another person to do the same. These chain letter-like exchanges — from Ho and Nam to CHART, from CHART to the artists, and so on — will be presented here throughout the run of the exhibition. As a testament to this moment, it is our hope that they will inspire further discussion and openness across generations within the artistic community.
*This project will be updated on a rolling basis, please continue to revisit this page for additional contributions.
Byron Kim, Artist — as reproduced from Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts
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Jean Shin, Artist — as preproduced from Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts
Kang Seung Lee, Artist
Alex Paik, Artist
![Antonia Kuo, Artist]()
![Amiko Li, Artist]()
![Kyoung eun Kang, Artist]()
![Jennie Jieun Lee, Artist]()
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![Naomi Kawanishi Reis, Artist]()
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Ho Jae Kim, Artist
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Gyun Hur, Artist
INDEX
Byron Kim, born in 1961, is a Senior Critic at Yale University. He received a BA from Yale University in 1983 and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1986. His works are in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; the M+ Museum, Hong Kong; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; the Tate Modern, London, UK; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; among numerous others. Kim lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and San Diego, CA.
Alex Paik is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. His modular, paper-based wall installations explore the mutability and interconnectedness of forms and structures. He has exhibited in the U.S. and internationally, with notable solo projects at Praxis New York, Art on Paper 2016, and Gallery Joe. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at BravinLee Projects, Ruschman Gallery, and MONO Practice, among others Paik is Founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and organizes Correspondence Archive, an online series of conversations between racialized artists.
Kyoung eun Kang is a New York-based artist born in South Korea. Kang works in a wide range of media, including live performance, video, painting, photography, installation, text, and sound pieces. Her work explores geographical and cultural identity and universal human themes such as affection and attachment, raising questions about how we foster and maintain human connection in an ever-changing world. She received a BFA and MFA in painting from Hong-ik University in Seoul, South Korea, and an MFA from Parsons, The New School for Design, New York, NY.
Jennie Jieun Lee is a Brooklyn-based artist who makes expressive, richly textured ceramics covered in abstract paintings hints of representational imagery of her immigrant experience. Her work challenges conventions of ceramic sculpture, embracing the inherent vulnerability of a medium that has long been tamed by its practitioners to both articulate and navigate her emotional and psychological spaces. Lee received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1999, and an MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 2019. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition with Martos Gallery and teaches ceramics at NYU.
Gyun Hur is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator whose experience as an immigrant daughter deeply fuels her practice. Gyun recently completed Stove Works Residency, Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, and Danspace Project Writer-in-Residency. She is the inaugural recipient of The Hudgens Prize. Her works have been featured in Hyperallergic, The Cut, Art In America, Art Paper, Sculpture, Art Asia Pacific, Public Art Magazine Korea, and more. Her interest in art making in public space led her to various artist presentations at the TEDxCentennial Women, Living Walls: The City Speaks, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The New School, and many others. Gyun has contributed as an artist-writer in fLoromancy, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Forgetory. Born in South Korea, she moved to Georgia at the age of 13. She currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Parsons School of Design.
Naoe Suzuki (she/her) is a visual artist, born in Tokyo, Japan, now based in Waltham, Massachusetts. She works primarily in drawing and text to explore humankind’s relationship to and history with ourselves, the environment, and our planet. Suzuki received her MFA in Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has been awarded grants by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council (two times), and Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation (two times). Her residency fellowships include Blue Mountain Center, MacDowell, Millay Colony for the Arts, Jentel, Studios at MASS MoCA, and Tokyo Wonder Site. Suzuki was an Artist-in-Residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in 2016–2017. Dancing has also been an important part of her life and she practices Gaga movement every day. She has been dancing together with her 85-year-old parents on Zoom every night for the past year during the pandemic.
Byron Kim, born in 1961, is a Senior Critic at Yale University. He received a BA from Yale University in 1983 and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1986. His works are in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; the M+ Museum, Hong Kong; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; the Tate Modern, London, UK; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; among numerous others. Kim lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and San Diego, CA.
Alex Paik is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. His modular, paper-based wall installations explore the mutability and interconnectedness of forms and structures. He has exhibited in the U.S. and internationally, with notable solo projects at Praxis New York, Art on Paper 2016, and Gallery Joe. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at BravinLee Projects, Ruschman Gallery, and MONO Practice, among others Paik is Founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and organizes Correspondence Archive, an online series of conversations between racialized artists.
Kyoung eun Kang is a New York-based artist born in South Korea. Kang works in a wide range of media, including live performance, video, painting, photography, installation, text, and sound pieces. Her work explores geographical and cultural identity and universal human themes such as affection and attachment, raising questions about how we foster and maintain human connection in an ever-changing world. She received a BFA and MFA in painting from Hong-ik University in Seoul, South Korea, and an MFA from Parsons, The New School for Design, New York, NY.
Jennie Jieun Lee is a Brooklyn-based artist who makes expressive, richly textured ceramics covered in abstract paintings hints of representational imagery of her immigrant experience. Her work challenges conventions of ceramic sculpture, embracing the inherent vulnerability of a medium that has long been tamed by its practitioners to both articulate and navigate her emotional and psychological spaces. Lee received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1999, and an MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 2019. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition with Martos Gallery and teaches ceramics at NYU.
Gyun Hur is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator whose experience as an immigrant daughter deeply fuels her practice. Gyun recently completed Stove Works Residency, Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, and Danspace Project Writer-in-Residency. She is the inaugural recipient of The Hudgens Prize. Her works have been featured in Hyperallergic, The Cut, Art In America, Art Paper, Sculpture, Art Asia Pacific, Public Art Magazine Korea, and more. Her interest in art making in public space led her to various artist presentations at the TEDxCentennial Women, Living Walls: The City Speaks, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, The New School, and many others. Gyun has contributed as an artist-writer in fLoromancy, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Forgetory. Born in South Korea, she moved to Georgia at the age of 13. She currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Parsons School of Design.
Naoe Suzuki (she/her) is a visual artist, born in Tokyo, Japan, now based in Waltham, Massachusetts. She works primarily in drawing and text to explore humankind’s relationship to and history with ourselves, the environment, and our planet. Suzuki received her MFA in Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has been awarded grants by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council (two times), and Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation (two times). Her residency fellowships include Blue Mountain Center, MacDowell, Millay Colony for the Arts, Jentel, Studios at MASS MoCA, and Tokyo Wonder Site. Suzuki was an Artist-in-Residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in 2016–2017. Dancing has also been an important part of her life and she practices Gaga movement every day. She has been dancing together with her 85-year-old parents on Zoom every night for the past year during the pandemic.
Jean Shin was born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in the United States. Shin attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1999 and received a BFA and MS from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, as well as an honorary doctorate from New York Academy of Art. Shin is a tenured Adjunct Professor of Fine Art at Pratt Institute and a recipient of Pratt’s 2017 Alumni Achievement Award. Her innovative work has been widely exhibited in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions — this year she had a solo project at Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, NY. Selected solo exhibitions include The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona, Crow Collection, Dallas and Storm King Art Center. Her works have been on view at the New Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum of Fine Art Boston, Asia Society Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Barnes Foundation, among other prestigious museums.
Antonia Kuo is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, film, sculpture, drawing, painting and printmaking. They received an MFA from Yale University, a BFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University, and a one-year certificate from the School of the International Center of Photography. In addition to numerous fellowships, their work has exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, Eyebeam, Microscope Gallery, Pioneer Works, and the Knockdown Center in New York; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in Montreal; and the West Bund Art Fair in Shanghai, among others. Kuo's work is in private collections and the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art and Centre Pompidou.
Naomi Kawanishi Reis was born in Shiga, Japan, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Transcultural Identity at Hamilton College. Reis has exhibited at Youkobo Art Space (Tokyo), Mixed Greens, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Wave Hill (NY), among others. In 2018 she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and was a 2015 NYFA Finalist in Painting. Reis is also founding member of artist-run gallery Tiger Strikes Asteroid NY, and co-organized the collective AN/OTHER NY: a nomadic workspace for Asian art practitioners to gather through reading groups, workshops, and public events.
Priscilla Jeong is a Korean-American visual artist born in Bryan, TX and based in New York, NY. Jeong received her MFA in Sculpture from Columbia University in 2021 - solo presentations include exhibitions at Interstate Projects, NY, and Ryan Lee Gallery, NY. Jeong’s work employs dystopian fiction and cultural criticism as an allegory to historical narrative and the personal experience of having one’s perception of reality continually questioned or dismissed. Her exposure to cross-culturalism accelerated her desire for visual language that communicates the nuances within the intersection of nature, human emotions, technology, architecture, ephemerality, organics and synthetics.
Antonia Kuo is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, film, sculpture, drawing, painting and printmaking. They received an MFA from Yale University, a BFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University, and a one-year certificate from the School of the International Center of Photography. In addition to numerous fellowships, their work has exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, Eyebeam, Microscope Gallery, Pioneer Works, and the Knockdown Center in New York; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in Montreal; and the West Bund Art Fair in Shanghai, among others. Kuo's work is in private collections and the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art and Centre Pompidou.
Naomi Kawanishi Reis was born in Shiga, Japan, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Transcultural Identity at Hamilton College. Reis has exhibited at Youkobo Art Space (Tokyo), Mixed Greens, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Wave Hill (NY), among others. In 2018 she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and was a 2015 NYFA Finalist in Painting. Reis is also founding member of artist-run gallery Tiger Strikes Asteroid NY, and co-organized the collective AN/OTHER NY: a nomadic workspace for Asian art practitioners to gather through reading groups, workshops, and public events.
Priscilla Jeong is a Korean-American visual artist born in Bryan, TX and based in New York, NY. Jeong received her MFA in Sculpture from Columbia University in 2021 - solo presentations include exhibitions at Interstate Projects, NY, and Ryan Lee Gallery, NY. Jeong’s work employs dystopian fiction and cultural criticism as an allegory to historical narrative and the personal experience of having one’s perception of reality continually questioned or dismissed. Her exposure to cross-culturalism accelerated her desire for visual language that communicates the nuances within the intersection of nature, human emotions, technology, architecture, ephemerality, organics and synthetics.
Kang Seung Lee is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in South Korea and now lives and works in Los Angeles. His work frequently engages the legacy of transnational queer histories, particularly as they intersect with art history. Lee’s work is currently exhibited in the 2021 New Museum Triennial, Soft Water, Hard Stone. and has had solo exhibitions and projects at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul; Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA; One and J. Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; Artpace, San Antonio; Los Angeles Contemporary Archive; and Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont. Selected group exhibitions include the 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Asia Cultural Center, Gwangju; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Daelim Museum, Seoul; Palm Springs Art Museum, CA; PARTICIPANT INC, New York; Canton Gallery, Guangzhou, China; LA><ART, Los Angeles; and Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito, Ecuador. He is represented by Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, and Gallery Hyundai, Seoul.
Amiko Li is a Shanghai born visual artist working in photography, text and video; his works explore the paradox of intimacy and distance. Li is the recipient of the PDN The Curator Award, Center Project Launch Award, and Royal Ulster Academy Portrait Prize. Exhibition and projections include Abrons Arts Center, New York; LeRoy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University, New York; Anthology Film Archive, New York, NY; Ulster Museum, Ireland; Thorvald Meyers 51, Norway; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, China; Power Station of Art, China; Flat Earth Film Festival, Iceland; and Belfast Photo Festival, Ireland. Publications include Adbusters; American Chordata; Artforum; Esquire Russia; Juxtapoz; New Yorker; and T Magazine. He is a full-time lecturer at Smith College.
Ho Jae Kim was born in Seoul and is based in Brooklyn. Kim received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. Most recently his work has been exhibited at Harper’s, New York (2021); EXPO Chicago, online (2021); SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York (2020); Christie's, New York (2020); K&P Gallery, New York (2019); and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York (2018). His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Forbes, and Unpluggedbaba, among other publications.
Marina Berio is a visual artist from New York City who works with drawings and photography to convey aspects of visual experience that are intimate and visceral. Berio earned her MFA in Photography at Bard. She has been awarded grants by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock/Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Aaron Siskind Foundation, and been invited to various residencies including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Millay and Schloss Plüschow. Berio currently teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Berio teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City, and has been invited to critique student work and speak as a visiting artist at many other graduate and undergraduate programs across the country.
Amiko Li is a Shanghai born visual artist working in photography, text and video; his works explore the paradox of intimacy and distance. Li is the recipient of the PDN The Curator Award, Center Project Launch Award, and Royal Ulster Academy Portrait Prize. Exhibition and projections include Abrons Arts Center, New York; LeRoy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University, New York; Anthology Film Archive, New York, NY; Ulster Museum, Ireland; Thorvald Meyers 51, Norway; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, China; Power Station of Art, China; Flat Earth Film Festival, Iceland; and Belfast Photo Festival, Ireland. Publications include Adbusters; American Chordata; Artforum; Esquire Russia; Juxtapoz; New Yorker; and T Magazine. He is a full-time lecturer at Smith College.
Ho Jae Kim was born in Seoul and is based in Brooklyn. Kim received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. Most recently his work has been exhibited at Harper’s, New York (2021); EXPO Chicago, online (2021); SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York (2020); Christie's, New York (2020); K&P Gallery, New York (2019); and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York (2018). His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Forbes, and Unpluggedbaba, among other publications.
Marina Berio is a visual artist from New York City who works with drawings and photography to convey aspects of visual experience that are intimate and visceral. Berio earned her MFA in Photography at Bard. She has been awarded grants by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock/Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Aaron Siskind Foundation, and been invited to various residencies including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Millay and Schloss Plüschow. Berio currently teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Berio teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City, and has been invited to critique student work and speak as a visiting artist at many other graduate and undergraduate programs across the country.