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Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Artist Residency
    • Bookshelf Residency
    • Digital Projects
    • Public Programs
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    • Special Projects
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    • Opportunities
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Back To Exhibitions
Scratching at the Moon February 10, 2024 ➽ July 28, 2024
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Scratching at the Moon February 10, 2024 ➽ July 28, 2024

Scratching at the Moon

2024

Organized by ICA LA guest curator Anna Sew Hoy and Good Works Executive Director Anne Ellegood, Scratching at the Moon is the first focused survey of Asian American artists in a major Los Angeles contemporary art museum. The exhibition celebrates the work of an intergenerational group of thirteen leading artists in the Asian American community whose contributions to culture are multiple, ranging from their distinctive visual arts production to their commitment to pedagogy to their dedication to research, activism, and community engagement. Featured artists include Patty Chang, Young Chung, Vishal Jugdeo, Simon Leung, Michelle Lopez, Yong Soon Min, Na Mira, Amanda Ross-Ho, Miljohn Ruperto, Dean Sameshima, Anna Sew Hoy, Amy Yao, and Bruce Yonemoto.

Scratching at the Moon centers on artistic production in Los Angeles to trace the overlapping activities among dynamic communities of Asian American artists who have contributed significantly to the city’s art world over the past two decades. The initial idea for the exhibition came in the summer of 2020 during a period of immense social upheaval. Still in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic marked by loss, unrest, and uncertainty, the movement in support of Black lives erupted across the country with public protests in the wake of egregious police violence. Simultaneously, Asian Americans faced increased attacks amid false rhetoric about the pandemic. In response, communities came together to uplift one another, strengthen bonds, and survive this singular global emergency. It was at this time that artist Anna Sew Hoy began to imagine an exhibition of Asian American artists with indelible ties to Los Angeles that would make visible the communities and relationships in which she had participated since returning to the city in 2002.

While Los Angeles has long been home to a large and growing Asian American population, the work of artists from diasporic immigrant communities remains underrepresented in art institutions in the city. Scratching at the Moon presents significant works—several created specifically for the exhibition—by artists who were born in the United States or who emigrated here from Korea, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Canada. Encompassing the mediums of video, multi-media installation, sculpture, ceramics, photography, and performance, these artists’ works confront such topics as the formation of identity, gender roles and class struggle, structural and environmental racism, immigration, cultural assimilation, gentrification, family dynamics and intergenerational teachings, and legacies of settler ideologies on academic disciplines. Scratching at the Moon also highlights the diverse stories of the Asian diaspora—undeniably “American” stories—that counter the hurtful untruths being deployed to further marginalize Asians of all backgrounds. Though the exhibition relies on the category of Asian American to redress the lack of representation, it also pulls apart that very category by honoring the diversity and multiplicity within it.

Scratching at the Moon argues that every body is an archive within which generations of experiences across continents and temporalities are held. The stories expressed by the works on view trouble and expand our understandings of what it means to be Asian American. Beyond superficial characteristics, they present a far more complex sense of identity as something informed by experiences of displacement, cross-cultural existence, misidentification, and marginalization, alongside strong family bonds, chosen communities, and resiliency. Contributing to efforts of coalition building, collaboration, and the beautiful entanglements that shape identity, Scratching at the Moon celebrates and historicizes the important work of these artists. Their commitment to community, criticality, and resistance is visible throughout the exhibition, and Scratching at the Moon provides an opportunity to bear witness, together, to the crucial stories they bring to light.

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Installation view, Scratching at the Moon, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 10–July 28, 2024. Photo: Jeff McLane / ICA LA.
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February 10, 2024, 2024, 4 PM - 7 PM
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Scratching at the Moon is organized by ICA LA guest curator Anna Sew Hoy and Good Works Executive Director Anne Ellegood, with support from Caroline Ellen Liou, Curatorial Associate.

Major support for Scratching at the Moon is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Fellows of Contemporary Art.

The exhibition is also generously funded by Tim Disney, Kathleen Kim and Eric Kim, The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Henry Moore Foundation. Additional support provided by the Friends of Scratching at the Moon group fund, including Annie Chu, Noriko Fujinami, Shue and Paul Her-Sturm, Julia Huang, Marilyn Long, Grace Oh and John Chan, Susan Song, Celia Yang, Christopher Yin and John Yoon.

Special thanks to Hen House Studios, Venice, CA.

ICA LA is supported by the Curator’s Council and Fieldwork Council.

Anne Ellegood has been the Good Works Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles since September 2019. She was the Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum from 2009-2019 and has held curatorial posts at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent curatorial projects include Witch Hunt (2021, cocurated with Connie Butler); Made in L.A. 2018 (co-curated with Erin Christovale); and Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World (2017). Ellegood serves on the Board of Directors of JOAN and on advisory committees for the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances (CARA) and Protocinema. Ellegood received her MA in Curatorial Practice from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and was a 2020 Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership. In 2020, Ellegood co-founded the Los Angeles Visual Arts Coalition, a coalition of small to mid-size visual arts organization in LA to provide mutual support, engage in shared fundraising and professional development, and advocate for our sector.

Anna Sew Hoy is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. She has participated in solo presentations of her work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Aspen Art Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, and, in Los Angeles, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum. She received a grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts in 2023, a Guggenheim Fellowship for Visual Art in 2022, and an Anonymous Was A Woman award in 2021. Sew Hoy is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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