Shifting in Place

Aliya Moudud , Curator

People of the Asian diaspora are intimately familiar with the tension that pulls us between static notions of home and the reality of constant change and migration. These perceptions of home often exist in the past tense—the blurry, distant parts of that past colored by shifting memories, longing, and grief. Meanwhile, the immediate present may exist in direct contrast to the past, strengthening feelings of what once was, even if those memories fade.

Photographs are always imbued with the perspectives of their makers, whether intentional or not. Behind every image is a sentiment influenced by the photographer’s relationship to that space and those subjects. Similarly, the images in this exhibition speak to all that happened before the photograph was taken. These artists of the Asian diaspora approach the present moment informed by memories of time that has passed through and is woven into physical space. Each of these photographs evokes a ghostly familiarity, as though the photographer is becoming acquainted with their own shadows. 

Shifting in Place explores the transience of space experienced by artists whose identities, communities, and memories are deeply tied to a land that once was. Histories and memories are situated within familiar physical landscapes that inform their relationships and identities. Though change has always been inevitable, the rate at which the world has experienced enormous global shifts is unprecedented. This exhibition features work that documents these shifts, exploring how identity and communities are constructed within the context of ephemeral memories and a rapidly changing landscape under globalization.

Betty Yu explores her family’s displacement due to gentrification within their community in Sunset Park. Her images present her parents’ daily life, fluctuating between the hectic moments and ones of rest. The fact that her parents continue on in the midst of change embodies a quiet resistance. By capturing the ways in which her parents ebb between being still and bustling about, her work seems to suggest, “Of course we continue on. What else?” 

Kevin J. Miyazaki investigates the domestic home as a site where American and Japanese history can be told. Originally barracks in the Japanese internment camps at Tule Lake in California and Heart Mountain in Wyoming during World War II, these buildings that were repurposed into family homes now embody the American dream as veterans returned and grew their families in them. The home reveals its history as it is interviewed by Miyazaki’s camera. There is an eeriness in these images; Miyazaki captures the walls in front of him, leaving us to wonder what’s behind them, hidden in the foundation.

Hồng-Ân Trương’s project introduces an alternate reality where her mother did not escape the Vietnam War and instead was one of the many women filmed by American soldiers. This unique project does not long for what once was or could have been, but simply asks, “what if?” Trương explores the gaze of the photographer—in this case, a perspective of American soldiers that sexualized the same women they were murdering. By taking these photographs into her own hands, Trương not only shifts the gaze but changes the entire narrative, leaning into change as a tool to imagine new realities. 

Jerry Lim captures slow change in the town of Imbe in Bizen Province in western Japan, where for over a thousand years the community has harvested clay from their soil and produced pottery unique to the town. They are reliant on the land and its consistency, and thus there is no other option when their soil inevitably changes. These works contrast rapid shifts due globalisation with the slowness that is required of people who live off of and with the land. The viewer is moved to grieve the images in front of them with the knowledge that it is slipping through our collective fingertips. The photographs capture a community that is quietly yielding to change, starkly differing from the unabashed resilience of Yu’s work.

Similarly to Miyazaki, Rahul Majumdar depicts physical space as a subject that tells its own story, looking at how memories of his familial relationships are embedded in the land and his family home. He explores how space changes with memory, a force which is never stagnant. Ghosts haunt these photographs, as Majumdar uses double exposures to depict images of his family seeped into the land. 

Tanya Bindra’s work reminds viewers of the expansive nature of being part of a “diaspora”.  These works are a reminder of how fluidly displacement moves through and beyond human beings. She begins with the internal, documenting her family’s experiences with displacement at the hands of colonialism while simultaneously internalizing colonial values, and moves to the external world as she observes the constant migration shifts occurring in her hometown of Hounslow, a suburb of West London. The tension in these brightly-colored images as Bindra oscillates between the internal and external, reminds viewers that displacement permeates every aspect of existence. 

In contrast to Majumdar’s work, Tomiko Jones uses physical space as an anchor to hold onto identity despite migration. She utilizes her photographs to return to her late grandmother who is a marker of her ethnic origins and, more importantly, her home space. Despite the physical home slipping away from Jones after the passing of her grandmother and the eventual sale of the house, she uses her photography practice to archive the space, freezing it in time. Jones’s work reminds us of the power of memory, that even when physical markers drift away or change, it is memory that allows us to hold one another close.

Shifting in Place

Shifting in Place explores the transience of space experienced by artists whose identities, communities, and memories are deeply tied to a land that once was. Our histories and memories are situated within the familiar physical landscapes which inform our relationships and identities. Though change is inevitable, the world has been experiencing enormous change globally at an unprecedented rate. This exhibition features work that documents these shifts, exploring how identity and communities are constructed within the context of ephemeral memories and a rapidly changing landscape under globalisation.

Identity and culture are intertwined with and based around the land that individuals and societies reside on. Our histories and memories are situated within these familiar locations. How we relate to others and understand our own selves is influenced by our physical landscapes.

Tanya Bindra is a filmmaker, producer, journalist, and photographer based between Los Angeles and Brooklyn.Tanya began her career in news, spending a decade as a photographer and cinematographer reporting on migration, postcolonial politics, and conflict in 20+ countries for outlets such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Previously based in West Africa, and with roots in Switzerland, India, Canada, and the UK, Tanya collaborates on documentary and editorial projects locally, nationally and internationally. She is currently working on her debut book of photography and has several scripted and unscripted film projects in development. Her personal photography and moving-image work explores the production of global cultures, with emphasis on the everyday spirituality of diasporic communities. She holds a bachelor’s degree from McGill University.

Tomiko Jones Jones received the Grand Challenge Seed Grant from the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education (2019-2022) for These Grand Places, a photographic project on public land. She was an invited resident artist at Museé Niépce in Chalon-Sur-Saône, France (2008), and selected for a project-specific Fellowship at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France (2009). Jones received her MFA and Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Arizona, Tucson, where she studied with Professors Sama Alshaibi and Frank Gohlke. Jones is Associate Professor of Art at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and holds a Vilas Professorship with an Early-Career Investigator Award (2024-27).  She has held several teaching appointments including Visiting Artist and Curator-in-Residence at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, Assistant Professor and Photography Program Coordinator at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Mendocino College, New Mexico State University and Drury University Summer Institute for Visual Arts. 

Jerry Lim (b. 1975) works with photography, text, sound and video. His work examines the ways in which history and knowledge are produced and how they operate in our physical world. His recent projects include photographs made at a North Korean school in Japan, the fading lighting district in New York City, 3D renderings of an encounter between a wild and GMO salmon, and a body of work based on the colonization and division of Korea. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in sculpture and his MFA from Cornell University. He is a committed educator and was awarded the 2023 Distinguished Teaching Prize from John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). The award is given to professors who demonstrate an exceptional commitment to student-centered, experienced, skilled, and justice-focused teaching. Lim is also an accomplished experimental guitarist having performed at venues such as Roulette, The Stone and Carnegie Hall. He has played with Joe McPhee, kayagum master Sang-Won Park, sound artist Sean Meehan, Martha Colburn, among others.

Rahul Majumdar was born and raised in India, within a bilingual family and is now living in NYC. Rahul’s work addresses the themes of belonging, grief, memory and the immigrant experience. Self-inquiry is the starting point for all of his work. The mediums of photography, printmaking, drawing and the written word help him with his inquiries in these areas. After a little over a decade with corporate India, he reached a point where he started to question his motivations and seek a more meaningful way to access the world. He turned to image making and has since been living life as a visual artist. With no formal education in the arts, he is self taught and seeks out independent mentors to learn from.

Kevin J. Miyazaki is an artist and photographer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His artwork focuses on issues of ethnicity, migration and place, often addressing his family history and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War ll. Miyazaki was born and raised in the suburban Midwest, culturally and physically far from ancestral roots in Japan, Hawaii and Washington state. His photographs have been exhibited at venues including The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Haggerty Museum of Art, Griffin Museum of Photography, Museum of Wisconsin Art and the Hyde Park Art Center.

Hồng-Ân Trương uses photography, video, and sound to explore immigrant, refugee, and decolonial narratives and subjectivities. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at the ICP (NY), the Nasher Museum of Art (Durham, NC), The Kitchen (NY), Nhà Sàn (Hanoi), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Phillips Collection (Washington D.C), the MCA Chicago, and the Museum of Modern Art (NY). Her work was included in the New Orleans triennial Prospect.4 in 2018. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2019-2020, the Capp St. Artist in Residence at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in 2020, a MacDowell Residency Herb Alpert Fellow in 2022, and an artist-in-resident at Shandaken Storm King in 2023. Most recently her solo exhibition at island gallery (NY) in Sept 2024  was reviewed in the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Shifter Magazine, in Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the Arts edited by Christopher K. Ho and Daisy Nam (Paper Monument 2021), and in American Art in Asia: Artistic Practice and Theoretical Divergence, edited by Michelle Lim and Kyunghee Pyun (Routledge 2022). Hồng-Ân lives in Durham, North Carolina where she is an organizer and a teacher. She is Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Betty Yu is an award-winning filmmaker, socially engaged multimedia artist, photographer and activist born and raised in NYC. Betty’s films and multimedia work focus on labor, immigration, gentrification, abolition, racism, militarism, transgender equality among other issues. Her work has been exhibited and screened at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, NY Historical Society, Museum of the City of NY, Tenement Museum, Artists Space/ISP Whitney Museum, 2019 BRIC Biennial, Apexart, Pace University Art Gallery, Transmitter Gallery, 601 Artspace, Five Myles, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, Bullet Space, Carriage Trade, Old Stone House and MAXXI in Rome, Margaret Mead Film Festival, Tribeca Film Institute’s Interactive Showcase, and Open Source Gallery. Yu won the Aronson Social Justice Award and is co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade. She holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College/CUNY, and a New Media Narratives certificate from the International Center of Photography. She has taught at Hunter College, Pratt Institute, Marymount Manhattan College, John Jay College and The New School. Her forthcoming photography and art college book, Family Amnesia: Chinese American Resilience will be released in late Spring 2025.

Aliya Moudud is an emerging curator with curatorial interests in migration and displacement, as well as feminist and decolonial perspectives. She is particularly interested in curation as a conduit to building art spaces that serve focally as community spaces, looking to deconstruct the convention of galleries being both elite and inaccessible. Moudud earned her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, having done research on the relationship between art and community building and the effects of globalization and migration laws on gender relations in countries in the Global South. She has worked as the Assistant Curator at the Riverfront Art Gallery in the Yonkers Public Library for three years and is the Programs Associate at En Foco, Inc.

Bronx Kreate Hub is a workspace and community incubator in Mott Haven that supports the growth and continued success of local artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs. Community members represent a diverse array of specialties, including animators, graffiti artists, photographers, designers, and community organizations like En Foco and the Mott Haven Film Festival among others. Studio spaces are available at an array of affordable price points, reaffirming Kreate Hub’s commitment to building community through access.