Staying In: Photographing the Asian American Home

Aperture, in collaboration with the Photography Program at Parsons School of Design, is pleased to present a panel discussion between Jarod Lew, Miraj Patel, Arthur Ou, and Julie Quon, as they explore themes of identity, familial presence, and the idiosyncrasies of the contemporary Asian American home within Aperture magazine’s most recent issue, “Being & Becoming: Asian in America.” Writer Xueli Wang will moderate the conversation.

What does it mean to be Asian American? The term was coined in 1968 as a political, not ethnic, coalition spurred in part by student activism in California in response to the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War. It now covers incredible diversity in geographic origins, class, language, culture, religions, and historical experience.

Guest edited by curator Stephanie Hueon Tung, this issue examines how photography helps us understand the historical and contemporary contours of an evolving Asian American identity and its political potential.

This program is presented in partnership with The New School.

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Xueli Wang is a writer and researcher interested in art and film from Asia and its diasporas. A PhD candidate in History of Art and Film and Media Studies at Yale University, Wang is presently writing a dissertation about disappearance and off-screen spaces in the work of Maggie Cheung. She was the 2021–22 MRC Fellow in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she contributed research and writing for the upcoming exhibition An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers. Her words have been featured in Artforum, Art in America, the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Arthur Ou is a Taiwanese American artist and educator based in Queens, New York. He has held solo exhibitions at venues, including Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens; Kathryn Brennan Gallery, New York; IT Park Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan; and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Ou’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria; LAXART; and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, among many others. His work has been written about in Artforum, Art in America, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, and has appeared in Aperture, Blind Spot, Camera Austria, and The Photograph as Contemporary Art. He has written critical texts in Aperture, Art in America, Foam, and OSMOS. Ou’s publications include the artist book The World Is All That Is the Case.

Jarod Lew is a Chinese American artist and photographer currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. His work explores themes of identity, community and displacement. One of his projects, Please Take Off Your Shoes was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2021, and is in a group exhibition at SFMOMA titled Kinship: Photography and Connection in 2023.

Lew created a new body of work commissioned by Aperture in partnership with FUJIFILM in 2022. The resulting work, In between You and Your Shadow, examines his relationship with his mother and her past.

Lew’s work has been written about in Aperture, Artforum, and Elephant Magazine. His photographs are in the permanent collections at the Harvard Art Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts. He has guest lectured at Stanford University and University of Michigan. He will receive his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2024.

Miraj Patel is an Indian American photographer based in New Haven, Connecticut. This past May, he graduated with an MFA from Yale University, School of Art’s photography program. Patel has exhibited work at the Breakfast Culture Club, Santa Barbara; Atelier Drome, Seattle; Yale University; PhMuseum Labs, Bologna; Preus Museum, Horten, Norway; Jakarta International Photo Festival; and other institutions around the world. His work has been featured in Aperture, Lenscratch, PhMuseum, and Photo-Spark. Patel was a 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist for his series Back East and a winner of Aperture/Fujifilm’s “Stories for Tomorrow” Prize.

Julie Quon is a photographer based in New York City. She earned a BA from Columbia University in architecture and completed the International Center of Photography’s certificate program where she received the Director’s Fellowship and Rita K. Hillman Award. Her interest lies in exploring the concepts of environment, identity, and intimacy, and has frequently used her family as subjects of her works.

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Image: Jarod Lew, Untitled (Family Restaurant), 2023. Courtesy the artist