Join ACC and Hyde Park Art Center (ACC 2019) in conversation with Aram Han Sifuentes (ACC 2019), Weston Teruya (ACC 2018) and Carol Zou. Moderated by curator, writer, and arts manager Megha Ralapati, these dynamic artists and cultural producers discuss their practices, which move fluidly between individual and collaborative modes, to enact social change, explore collectivity, and expand racial justice. 

WATCH

Watch the full recording below or on ACC's YouTube Channel.
 

 


LEARN MORE

Visit the links below to learn more about Aram, Weston, Carol, and Megha's recent projects responding to the current moment, addressing inequities of the past, and envisioning possibilities for the future.  
 


Megha Ralapati and Dan S. Wang
Now-Time Asian America
 
Aram Han Sifuentes
Official Unofficial Voting Station

Weston Teruya
The future now

 Carol Zou
The People's WPA & MOTO VOTO

 


MEET THE SPEAKERS

Aram Han Sifuentes (fiber and social practice artist) works to claim spaces for for immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion and protest. She participated in an ACC Fellowship in 2019 as an artist-in-residence at A. Farm in Vietnam.

Solo exhibitions of her work have been exhibited at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago, IL), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago, IL), Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia, PA), Table Art Center (Charleston, IL), University Galleries at Illinois State University (Normal, IL), and Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO). Her multi-stage exhibition, Talking Back to Power: Projects by Aram Han Sifuentes, will take place at the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA) in 2020-2022. Aram is a 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2016 3Arts Awardee, 2017 Sustainable Arts Foundation Awardee, and a 2020 Map Fund Grantee. She earned her BA in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently the 2020-2021 Artist-in-Residence at Loyola University Chicago. Learn more at https://www.aramhansifuentes.com/. Follow Aram on Instagram and her Protest Banner Lending Library on Facebook. Photo credit Virginia Harold.
 

 Weston Teruya (artist) moves between individual and collective modes of practice. In his individual work, he has created projects for the Mills College Art Museum (Oakland), University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa (Honolulu), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Kearny Street Workshop (San Francisco), as well as the public art programs of the San Francisco and Alameda County Arts Commissions. He received an ACC Fellowship in 2018 to explore the intersection of public space, social movements, and community histories while in residence at A. Farm in Vietnam.

Weston is also one-third of Related Tactics, a collective of transdisciplinary artists of color who create projects at the intersection of race and culture. We have produced projects for the Museum of Capitalism (New York iteration) and the Berkeley Art Center (Berkeley, CA). We will have a public project, The future now, curated by Astria Suparak for the University of San Francisco Thacher Gallery, launching in November. Learn more at https://westonteruya.com/, or follow Weston on Instagram.
 

Carol Zou (cultural producer) facilitates creative social change projects with a focus on racial justice, informal labor, and public space. She is a reproductive laborer, insofar as joy, connection, creativity, social change, and being the “cool aunt” constitutes reproductive labor. Current and past affiliations include: Yarn Bombing Los Angeles, Michelada Think Tank, Trans.lation Vickery Meadow, Project Row Houses with the University of Houston, Asian Arts Initiative, American Monument, Imagining America, US Department of Arts and Culture, Spa Embassy, and Enterprise Community Partners with Little Tokyo Service Center. She believes that we are most free when we help others get free. Learn more at http://thisliferecorded.com/.
 

Megha Ralapati (curator, writer and arts manager) manages the Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center, which supports artists across Chicago and internationally, as well as initiates collaborations with community-focused organizations like Project Row Houses (Houston) and ARTPORT Tel Aviv. As an independent curator, she has developed exhibitions, including “Xenophilia” in Chicago (2016), “Double-Jointed” at Scaramouche gallery in New York (2012), and contributed to “New Narratives: Contemporary Art from India” at the Chicago Cultural Center (2007). Her writing has been included in publications, South as a State of Mind (Documenta 2018); Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic (2015 Brooklyn Museum), Black Sun (2014 Devi Art Foundation) and Manual for Treason (2011 Sharjah Art Foundation). Megha received an MA in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths and a BA in Art History and Anthropology from Columbia University.
 


This online talk is presented as part of an ongoing partnership between Asian Cultural Council and Hyde Park Art Center. 
 

Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering and production space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections. Learn more at https://www.hydeparkart.org/.