Exhibition

MA Curatorial Practice presents “Floating Coordinates: Self in Transit,” an exhibition curated by MA Curatorial Practice student Hongjin Zhou that highlights the adaptable identities of transnational people whose lives are characterized by cultural loss, the fragmentation of memory, and creative actions. Participating artists include Loane Tran Colatruglio, Tori Liu, Claudia Shi, and Rainy Yuchen Wei.

“Floating Coordinates: Self in Transit” features four artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, including Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, emphasizing the potential for art as a collaborative medium in the globalized world to reveal the fragility and changeable nature of identity in our time of contested and constant migration. From concrete to abstract visual narrative modes, these works, including photographs, paintings, and a video, explore the dispensability of memory and the persistence of identity in today’s circumstances of immigration. Loane Tran Colatruglio utilizes the camera and photographic techniques, deconstructing fixed narratives by reconstructing images via projection and archival re-photography, embodying the theme of “fluid identity and memory reshaping” through material fragility. Tori Liu takes masterful advantage of the monochrome color pink to symbolize the deepest, geographically transcendent, emotional bond between her and her beloved dog, distilling the unbreakable spiritual connection between her and her homeland in the Chinese mainland, and anchoring fragmented memory. With the combination of painting, video installations, and interactive sound-visual technologies, Claudia Shi translates diverse internal visions and emotional intensity into sound and image, bridging different cultural fragments and accomplishing concrete expressions of fluid self-identity. Floating Coordinates: Self in Transit ends with thick-layered abstract paintings by Rainy Yuchen Wei, who explores the reconstruction of identity in a “third space” based on the idea of natural symbiosis. The circulation of memory across borders, as a consequence of transnationalism, and the experience of generational inheritance, present the state of identity in continuous construction, so urgent for our times.

CP Projects Space, 132 West 21st Street, 10th floor, is open Monday through Friday, 10:00am – 6:00pm, and weekends by appointment.