Five Visions of The World • curated by John Yau: Nidhi Agarwal, Xingzi Gu, Eunha Kim, Nanako Kono and Maisie Luo

I met the artists in this exhibition in different cities and countries: New Brunswick (NJ); New York City; Chicago; an artist residency in Tao Hua Tan, Anhui Province, China. Their work made such a strong impression on me that it was easy to see their work together in my mind’s eye. I went to the studio of Maisie Luo many times over two years, as she was an MFA student at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University), where I was teaching at the time. I saw Eunha Kim’s paintings when I was invited by six graduate students in Hunter’s MFA program to critique their work. I saw Xingzi Gu’s work when I guest critiqued students in the MFA program NYU. Similarly, I encountered Nanako Kono’s work in a graduate group show at the School of the Art Institute. Finally, I went to Nidhi Agarwal’s studio when we were in residency at Tao Hua Tan.

 

With each of these artists, I was struck by their adventurousness and determination. They worked across mediums, from cut-paper and collage to plastic sheets, acrylic, and oil, to sewn cloth and animation. They were uncompromising and seemed to care little about fitting into the latest trend. Talking with them, I learned about their backgrounds, their feelings of uprootedness, and their search for something that could convey their sense of dislocation. Their art is one of agency. They are in touch with their local circumstances, cultural heritage, and their culture’s art history. Their subjects include UFOs or being labeled an “alien, folk tales, the production of meat, and misunderstandings in communication and language. Their work does not look like each other’s, nor does it look like any other work that I have seen in recent years. That alone is reason to single them out. Beyond that, what I am impressed by is how easy it is for me to call up their work, how vivid it remains to me, even in the cases where I saw their work only briefly.