SPECTATOR: Screening and Talk with Asif Mian, Kenneth Tam, and Eugenie Tsai

Asia Art Archive in America is thrilled to share a screening of works by artists Asif Mian and Kenneth Tam. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the two artists and will be moderated by curator, Eugenie Tsai. The event will share videos of early works as well as more recent investigations by both artists that focus on overlapping themes of ritual practice and masculinity through the lens of performance.

An earlier iteration of this screening was shared to a limited audience during Mian’s solo exhibition at Management Gallery in 2023.

Asif Mian’s practice explores how events are perceived, processed, and passed on. He has devoted much of his career—via video, installation, performance, and sculpture—to investigating the tenuous connections between the events that shape one’s life. Informed by science, mythology, and transcendentalism, Mian's breaking down and rearranging of medium evokes a liminal psychological space, where the “ghosts” of events and the mental processing of violence reside.

Mian earned an MFA Visual Arts from Columbia University (2018); and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2018). He graduated from Drew University with a BS Biology (Genetics) and a BA Studio Art.

Awarded the Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artist, Mian’s multi-chapter project, ‘RAF’, was the focus of a 2021 solo exhibit at Queens Museum. Mian is an Artadia Award NYC finalist, and a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award recipient.

In addition to Queens Museum, Mian has held solo exhibitions at Management, NYC, Sweetpass Sculpture Park, Dallas, TX, Crush Curatorial, NYC, and Fjord Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. Mian has participated in prominent group exhibitions at Okayama Art Summit 2022 curated by Rirkrit Tiravanija, The Kitchen for the Whitney ISP curatorial exhibit “Disss-co, Haunt”, The Shed: Open Call, Queens Museum International: Volumes, BRIC “Beyond Geographies”, among others. Mian has participated in residencies at MacDowell Colony, VT; LMCC Workspace, NYC; AZ West with Andrea Zettel, Joshua Tree, CA; among others. His solo exhibitions have been reviewed in Art Forum, Artnet, Art Observer, and The Dallas News.

Kenneth Tam is an artist based in Houston, TX and Queens, NY. Tam received his MFA in 2010, and has a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Tam uses video, sculpture, installation, movement, performance, and photography to examine themes including the performance of masculinity, the transformative potential of ritual, and expressions of intimacy within groups. Tam often implicates the male body in his projects, using humor and pathos to reveal the performative and unstable nature of identity, and often creates situations that foreground tenderness and vulnerability within unlikely settings.

Tam has had solo exhibitions at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Tufts University Art Gallery, MA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkeley; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Queens Museum, New York; The Kitchen, New York; Visual Arts Center, The University of Texas at Austin; Minneapolis Institute of Art; and MIT List Center for Visual Arts, Cambridge. He is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts grants to artists in 2023, and his work is in the collections of The Guggenheim, LACMA, The Hammer Museum, The Cantor Art Center, KADIST, The Dallas Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Tam is currently an Assistant Professor at Rice University, and faculty at The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

Eugenie Tsai is a curator and writer based in New York. From 2007 – 2023, she was the John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, at the Brooklyn Museum where she oversaw the Contemporary collection, and organized loan and collection exhibitions. Exhibitions she organized include “Oscar yi Hou: East of Sun, West of Moon” (2022-23), “Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven” (2022), “The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time” (2021-2022) and KAWS: WHAT PARTY” (2021). She also curated “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic” (2015), co-curated “Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed Stuy and Beyond“ (2014), and Toya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital” (2013).

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, Ruth Foundation, and the Vilcek Foundation.

Host or Publisher Asia Art Archive in America