‘Light, Space and Time’ showcases art from three California-based AANHPI artists – AsAmNews

“The farther out you are, the more clear the image becomes, which I love. I love this paradox that in order to see you need space you need distance in order to see,” Lee said.

Throughout her career, Lee has received the support of organizations like the Chinese Culture Center. She feels grateful to get to work with galleries like Alisan Fine Arts that support Asian artists and hopes to lend her support to other AANHPI artists.

“I think the racism that affects Asians is one of invisibility. And so I think art is a very powerful medium to put the experience of API people or the expression of API people into the mainstream and say we’re here,” Lee said.

Zhang Jian-Jun is still evolving

Zhang Jian-Jun knew he wanted to be an artist since he was a young boy but told AsAmNews that there weren’t many avenues for young artists growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution.

When he was 14, Zhang’s art teacher noticed he had a “special talent” for art and asked him if he would be interested in participating in a special after-school art program. After a few months in the program, Zhang’s teacher offered to give him private lessons. 

“He told me he said, ‘I want to teach you real art, not the propaganda you know,’” Zhang recalled. His teacher made him promise not to tell his classmates about the lessons he was receiving.

During the hot Shanghai summers, in a stuffy room, Zhang learned about everything from classical European art to impressionism. He went on to graduate from the Department of Fine Art at the Shanghai Theater Academy in 1978. 

In 1987, the Asian Cultural Council of the Rockefeller Foundation invited him to New York for an academic study visit. He spent 20 years working in New York working as an artist and, eventually, a professor at NYU before moving to Los Angeles.

Six years after initially moving to New York, Zhang returned to China to visit his parents and observed that society was changing “tremendously.” He documents the changes in a series of sculptures called “China Chapter,” which feature in the “Light, Space and Time” exhibit.

The exhibit also includes a few paintings from Zhang’s “Rubbings” series. The series is meant to be a dialogue with nature, examining the sun, rain and the cosmos.

Zhang hopes that people who view his work will be able to see how his style has evolved over a decade from his roots in Shanghai to his current works.

“I’m not saying I’m Chinese artist. I am an artist with Chinese background, but I’m contemporary. So that is my direction.”

Julie W. Chang examines identity construction

For San Francisco-based artist Julie W. Chang, art is an opportunity to explore how identities are constructed, including her own.

Chang grew up as the only daughter of Chinese immigrants in an affluent beach town in Orange County, California. 

“By an early age, I was already certain of two truths. I would always be haunted by questions of self and other, belonging versus alienation. I could always find refuge, meaning and purpose in the process of creating or making,” Chang said in an email interview with AsAmNews.

“In school, this led me to pursue degrees in sociology and studio art, which have continued to be the foundation for my work to this day,” she added.

Chang called her relationship with her AANHPI identity “complicated,” but emphasized her gratitude to the AANHPI community. 

“To be included and so warmly embraced within the AANHPI in recent years has really challenged that story. The experience has been healing and empowering to say the least and I’m grateful for the opportunity to help grow, and to continue to grow, within this space and community,” Chang wrote to AsAmNews.

Chang’s intricate pieces reflect the diverse identities that exist around the globe.

“Working with patterns, symbols, textiles, weavings, etc. from diverse cultures allows me to celebrate differing perspectives, reflect a rich multiplicity of traditions and to invite the more difficult conversations around race, gender and class,” Chang wrote to AsAmNews.

In her Amulet series, for example, she colorful patterns are interwoven using paint and resin to symbolize “healing, wisdom, redemption, joy, enlightenment, interdependence and peace.” The series reflects on how those values exist as protective energies. 

In Migration, she used a “simple mathematical system to guide the interaction of shapes and color, in order to highlight the invented structures in which we operate: rules, constraints, and possibilities.”

“Light, Space and Time” is on display at Alisan Fine Arts’ gallery at 120 E 65th St, New York until June 22.