NP014
Pearl C. Hsiung >>>
Favorite LA gallery/community space, art or otherwise?
Commonwealth & Council and Visitor Welcome Center (both located in the same building in Koreatown). I was really excited by the fact that Commonwealth & Council not only shows work by fresh voices, female, POC and queer artists but that the space shows these artists and their boundary-expanding practices consistently in their programming. Recently, I exhibited a solo show at Visitor Welcome Center, which also has a similar approach, and really came to appreciate having my work framed in such a context. My last solo show of new work was in 2010. At the time I was the only Asian American artist and one of a few women represented at a gallery amidst a gallery scene that was also predominantly white, straight and male. For this past show at VWC in 2017 I was really thrilled to be hanging work in a different context; book-ended, informed by and adding to a specific creative community, expanding the representation of a we that is often invisible and marginalized by the majority of LA art galleries and institutions.
Best show you’ve seen recently?
The best work I experienced recently was a lecture by A.L. Steiner at the Women’s Center for Creative Work, as part of an X-TRA's ARTIST WRITES series. I attended 2+ hours of an 8-hour discussion and lecture where Steiner shared texts, online literature, websites, youtube and her own video and written works to describe and explore the current exploded state of ecological, political and cultural chaos through her critical lens. For me, Steiner and her practice are simultaneously urgent yet generous, radical yet humorous. (Her upcoming text in the September issue of X-TRA is titled “It’s Nobody’s Fault: Extinction of Consciousness and Everything Else” so there you go!) I felt intellectually and psychically nourished by this event, the ideas and observations she introduced me to still pop up in my everyday thinking as I try to process what is going on politically and as a consumer.
Artist you’re excited about?
I’m excited about the upcoming Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA shows that will be all around town. One of the exhibitions that will be shown at both the Chinese American Museum (CAM) and the California African American Museum (CAAM) is "Circles and Circuits I: History and Art of the Chinese Caribbean Diaspora” that will present art of the Chinese Caribbean diaspora of the early 20th century to present day. I’m not familiar with this history and am really looking forward to learning about it through the works of artists of Chinese descent from Cuba, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and elsewhere.
What music have you been listening too?
This month, songs: “Summer of Love” B52s, “Love’s in Need of Love Today” both Stevie Wonder original and George Michael’s cover, “Space Children” and “Come Into My Life" LaBelle, “LOVE” Kendrick Lamar and the new Abbath album but especially his (their?) cover of Judas Priest’s “Riding on the Wind”, I highly recommend it, it’s pretty hilarious and pleasurable.
Any shows coming up?
Something I’m excited about in Summer 2018 and Fall 2018 that I will be able to reveal at a later date.
Chosen footwear of the moment.
Black converse high tops (black soles) and silver metallic oxfords I bought on clearance at DSW.com.
For more information on Pearl C. Hsiung, please visit:
pearlchsiung.com
@prlhsiung
all photographs by Aaron Farley
