Return Flight: Diasporic Artists on Presenting Work in the “Motherland”

AAAinA is honored to host artists Megumi Shauna Arai, Gi (Ginny) Huo, Melissa Joseph, and curator Sofia Thiệu D’Amico for an evening of presentations and conversations. The program, titled Return Flight: Diasporic Artists on Presenting Work in the “Motherland,” will focus on each of the speakers recent experiences of showcasing work in their ancestral homes. The evening will highlight their projects as well as the experiences of working as both an insider and outsider (or perhaps a third, different thing altogether), and the complexity of this type of “return.” After individual presentations, they will share a conversation moderated by Director of Programs, Collections, and Exhibitions, Claire Kim.

Bios:

Megumi Shauna Arai (b. 1989) lives and works in New York City. She is interested in many things, including points of encounter, practices of embodiment, enfolding and unfolding aesthetics and the material and immaterial as interconnected. She has an interdisciplinary BA in Sociology, Embodiment Studies, Political Science and Mysticism from the CUNY Unique and Individualized Studies Program. In Fall 2025 she was the Artist in Residence at Common/Oppes in Chiba, where she completed the work for her first solo show in Japan. This exhibition Sinew opened at Koki Arts in Tokyo, November 2025. Recent exhibitions include Immanent Infinite, Object & Thing (2025); Group Shop, Bridget Donahue Gallery (2024); Summer Arrangement: Object & Thing at LongHouse (2023); The Third Kind, Management Gallery (2023) Object & Thing at Madoo (2022); At The Noyes House: Blum & Poe, Mendes Wood DM and Object & Thing (2020); Lore: Reimagined, Wing Luke Museum (2018) and Midst, Jacob Lawrence Gallery (2018). Recent residencies include Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library; Headlands Center for the Arts and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Pedagogical collaborations include Field Meridians, an art-based urban ecology curriculum creating tools for resilience through social practice in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, The Museum of Modern Art public programs and The Mothership, an eco-feminist art and ecology center in Tangier, Morocco.

Gi (Ginny) Huo is an artist and educator thinking on the intentions of what people believe, the legacies of religious systems and its geopolitical impact. Huo works across mediums in sculpture, video, artists books, drawing, photography, and printmaking and has exhibited in places such as DOOSAN Gallery in Seoul, SK Gallery, Princeton University, CANADA Gallery, The Drawing Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, Baxter St CCNY, Franconia Sculpture Park and The Smithsonian Archives of American Art. In the past decade, Huo has created and facilitated programs for the Education and Public Programs departments at The Studio Museum in Harlem, The New Museum of Contemporary and has been a Lecturer at Parsons, School of Design, CUNY College of Staten Island, and Princeton University. Huo has participated in residencies and fellowships such as Here and There THAT Residency, Center for Photography - Woodstock, Robert Blackburn Printshop SIP Fellowship, Smack Mellon, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Princeton Arts Fellowship.

Melissa Joseph is a New York based artist. Her work considers themes of memory, family, history, and the politics of how we occupy spaces. She intentionally alludes to the labors of women as well as experiences as a second generation American and the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life. Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, Delaware Contemporary, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA Arlington, ICA San Francisco, and List Gallery at Swarthmore College. She has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Artnet, Artnews, New American Paintings, WNYC, Le Monde, Vogue, CNN, Whitewall, Family Style, and participated in residencies including Artpace, Dieu Donné Workspace Residency, The Textile Arts Center, BRIC, Fountainhead, the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, the Museum of Arts and Design, and at Greenwich House Pottery. She is the recipient of the 2025 UOVO Prize by the Brooklyn Museum and a regular contributor to BOMB Magazine.

Sofia Thiệu D’Amico is an independent curator and researcher based in New York, currently serving as co-director of the Brooklyn-based artist-run space Transmitter. Her work is invested in social practice and poetics, with recent research focused on intercolonial solidarities and abolitionist imaginings. She previously worked as assistant curator of Canal Projects and has held arts administrative roles at organizations such as the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics, the Isamu Noguchi Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Sofia holds an MA from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, and her thesis research will be featured in the upcoming volume Borders of Art: Migration, Mobility and Artistic Practice (American University of Cairo Press, 2026). She has been a visiting critic at various residencies around New York City such as NARS Foundation, ISCP, and Brooklyn Navy Yard Studios, among others.

Photo credit: Gi (Ginny) Huo (credit: Saif Al-Sobaihi), Megumi Shauna Arai (credit: OK McCausland), Melissa Joseph (credit: Ryan Lowry), Sofia Thiệu D’Amico (credit: Paul Rho)

Light refreshments will be provided.

AAAinA’s general programming and operations are funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Vilcek Foundation, and other foundations and individuals.

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