Within Global Isolation: Asian Artists in America

Leonard Suryajaya is an interdisciplinary artist focused in photography who lives and works in Chicago. He was raised as an Indonesian citizen of Chinese descent, and educated as a Buddhist in a Muslin-majority country. Suryajaya uses photography to test the boundaries of intimacy, community, and family. He received his BFA from California State University in 2013, his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2017. Suryajaya has exhibited at major institutions worldwide, including the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece (2018); Mana Contemporary in Miami, FL (2018); Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL (2017); and Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland (2017).

Hương Ngo (Ngô Ngọc Hương, 吳玉香) was born in Hong Kong, and works between France, Vietnam and the US. Having grown up as a refugee in the American South, she engages histories of colonialism and migration, particularly in relationship to language, structures of power, and ideologies. In 2016, she was awarded the Fulbright US Scholar Grant in Vietnam to realize a project, exhibited at DePaul Art Museum (2017), and continued through the Camargo Core Program (2018), that examines the colonial history of surveillance in Vietnam and the anti-colonial strategies of resistance vis-à-vis the activities of female organizers and liaisons. Her work has been exhibited worldwide at the MoMA, MCA Chicago, Nhà Sàn Collective, and Para Site.

Ying Zhu (b. 1979 in Lanzhou, China) lives and works in Washington, D.C. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Nebraska in 2010, Zhu has exhibited widely, including the exhibitions Dialogueat Stable Arts in Washington, D.C. (2020); Material Women at the Smith Center in Washington, D.C. (2020); Landing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taiwan (2015); Magical Thinking at Roots Division in San Francisco, CA (2014); III Moscow Young Art Biennalein Moscow, Russia (2012); and Mind the Gap at the Neukolln Art Festival Nacht Und Nebel in Berlin, Germany (2011).

Han Hongzheng (they/them) received their MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU in 2019. During their study at the IFA, Han co-found IFA Contemporary Asia, the first pan-Asian art forum at NYU. Han is now an independent curator and art researcher working and living in NYC. Focusing on racial identities and body politics, Han’s curatorial works include Runaway World 2020: Ten Chinese Artists Group Show; Beyond Borders: Art in the Post COVID Era, and others. Han is determined to utilize their personal and educational exploration of racial identity and queerness to develop methodologies that bring exposure to under-represented artists and marginalized groups, as well as establish a sophisticated rejection of an outdated east/west academic dichotomy.

Chandler Allen is a doctoral student in the History of Science, with a particular focus on intersections between modern and contemporary art and science and those who skirt the history-fiction divide. Prior to Princeton, she worked as a curator and associate for galleries, museums, and auction houses in New York and London, and earned an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Art History, and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas Austin. Chandler is currently a President’s Fellow at Princeton.