Museums provided safe spaces and emerged as beacons of hope during unsettled times in our past. USC PAM is here for you now. Galleries@PAM invite you into our enriching museum world to help you find much needed respite in the face of overwhelming events.

Monday, July 20, 2020: Galleries@PAM – Kaoru Mansour


In this talk, “We are Here” artist Kaoru Mansour @kaorumansour discusses her childhood growing up in rural Japan, her connection with nature and how this all inspires her art practice. Visit our YouTube channel and learn more about her art.


Monday, July 13, 2020: Galleries@PAM – Sichong Xie

In this talk, “We are Here” artist Sichong Xie @sichongxie discusses her journey from China to art school in the United States and how her work is intertwined with her family history. She also delves deeper into her installation at the USC PAM special exhibition galleries.


Monday, July 6, 2020: Galleries@PAM – Artist Talk, Ahree Lee

In this talk, “We are Here” artist Ahree Lee discusses weaving, the relation that weaving has to early forms of computer programming, how programming was first considered a feminine career and the looms influence on her practice. Visit our YouTube channel and learn more about her art.

Monday, June 29, 2020: Galleries@PAM – Artist Talk, Ann Le

In this talk, “We are Here” artist Ann Le discusses her work and it’s profound connections with her family archive. She discusses the importance of creating personal family narratives through her work. Click to watch Ann Le’s Artists Talk on our YouTube channel and learn more about her art.


Monday, June 22, 2020 – Galleries@PAM: We Are Here 3D Tour

“Asian communities in Los Angeles abound with diversity. A multitude of ethnicities and nationalities from across the Asian continent are present here. Residents have sought fresh new opportunities, arriving as refugees, economic migrants, students, or professionals. In celebration of these communities, USC PAM presents seven dynamic female contemporary artists who embody the vitality of our city’s Asian populations. Each of these artists speak to the fluidity of an individual’s sense of place and self. Their artworks spark important conversations about the creation of art, memory, and meaning in complex social and cultural spaces. The galleries are interwoven with narratives that give voice to L.A. while simultaneously speaking to the transnational reality of life in the twenty-first century.” —— Introductory text for “We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles,” Now you can explore the exhibition in 3D via the link in our bio!


Monday, May 25, 2020: Galleries@PAM – Take a virtual tour of Oscar Oiwa immersive dome, Dreams of a Sleeping World!

The 360 degree installation opened on January 10, 2020 and was meant to allow the visitor to escape the chaos of the outside world and in these chaotic times, this exhibition is very timely.
Now you can enjoy the exhibition, again, from the comfort of your home!

Stay tuned as we virtually bring more of our galleries to you!


Monday, May 18, 2020 – We Are Here: Mini-Docs: Kaoru Mansour

Gallery@PAM: Artist Gallery Talks Saturday, May 30th, 2020 at 2:30 PM Join us online via zoom!
Join exhibited artist, Kaoru Mansour, (@kaorumansour) as she discusses her work in an informal and intimate gallery talk series via Zoom meeting. Free Please RSVP to receive the zoom invitation. Link in bio.

Monday, May 11, 2020 – Mei Xian Qiu from We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles exhibition

Qiu draws from her personal history to reconstruct the unknown, fantastical notions of culture, self-invented and revelatory and iconic. This type of flexible self-view and easy piercings of notions of the impermeable interior self, are in keeping with the new contemporary landscape of commonplace transience and a growing global monoculture. Find out more about Qiu and meet her in our next segment of Artists Talks this Saturday, May 16th!

Monday, May 4, 2020 – Kaoru Mansour from We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles exhibition

Celebrating Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month all month long, and who better to profile than the amazing female artists in our We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices exhibition! Born in Japan, Kaoru Mansour grew up surrounded by nature and continues to look to the natural world in her paintings. She tinkers with materials and images to create compositions and surfaces that are both sensuous and irreverent, personal and universal. Her art is whimsical and is filled with humor, something much needed in these strange times. To top it off, her own music is playing in the background!

Monday, April 27, 2020 – Meet Reanne Estrada from from We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles exhibition

Estrada’s is an artist with a happily schizophrenic practice. She uses performance and object-making to examine the unstable nature of identity and the fragility of the body. Estrada often collaborates with other artists to create performance events that investigate cultural and gendered meaning in contemporary society. For her We Are Here exhibition, she created an app navigating the security cameras at the USC Pacific Asia Museum gallery that watch the people and objects at the museum. Although the museum is temporarily closed, the app is available for download to experience her work. Link in bio, once downloaded, search for We Are Here!

Monday, April 20, 2020 – Meet Sichong Xie from from We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles exhibition

Monday, April 14, 2020: Meet An Le from We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles exhibition

Taking you into our galleries, we are visiting our We Are Here exhibition, focusing on artist Ann Le who uses her work as a way to explore her family’s history within the larger context of war. She excavates her lineage by revisiting her family’s experiences. Using archived family photos and stories, Le’s works are layers of images, building upon each other, often touching on emigration, history, family, and memory.

Monday, April 6, 2020: Meet Ahree Lee from We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles exhibition


Continuing our introduction of our We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles, artists, we are proud for you to meet, Ahree Lee. As a child of Korean immigrants raised American, Ahree Lee looks to the past and across distances to investigate what constitutes an individual or collective identity in an increasingly diasporic, culturally alienated and fractured world. Lee uses algorithms to transform imagery like daily self-portraits, home movies, and other image archives that she finds or creates. Her work aggregates these fragments into a new sum that is greater than its parts using contemporary time-based mediums such as video, sound, and interactivity. Lee’s artworks uncover personal links to ongoing inquiries about who and what is integral to social and technological change. Her recent work investigates how invisible labor, specifically work that has traditionally been done by women, is essential to the life of economic systems. Lee’s handwoven textiles merge weaving and computer coding. Through research and process, Lee reveals a history of connection: the first computers were based on the technology of the loom. Reactivating the link between weaving and computing, Lee’s weavings and computer-generated videos draw on code, algorithms, and self-generated labor data.

 

Monday, March 30, 2020: Meet Phung Huynh from We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles exhibition


This ground breaking exhibition opened only four days before we temporarily closed due to Covid-19 precautionary measures. These seven Los Angeles based female contemporary artists of diverse Asian Pacific heritages engage with and draw from their family’s experiences as refugees, immigrants and foreign nationals to create compelling works of art that invite visitors to think about their histories. Interwoven in their works are personal and universal narratives that give voice to the plural community we call home. Now that we are all “safer at home,” home takes on a new meanings. We hope you can find some solace, inspiration and hope in the exhibition, and each of these bodies of work. In the next several weeks we will take you into the We Are Here exhibition galleries, and introduce you to each artist from our home to yours…

First up, please meet, Phung Huynh. Born in Vietnam, she came to the United States as a refugee when she was a toddler with her family. Her narrative of survival and migration is entangled in the complex history of postwar Asia, a period of upheaval, de-colonialism, reconstruction, and nationalism. Her recent work on view in We Are Here explores the Southeast Asian refugee experience in Los Angeles. Portraits of refugees on pink donut boxes reference the donut shops that gave Cambodian refugees an opportunity to build a new life after fleeing genocide. The sensitive portraits of refugees celebrate their power and perseverance. Cross stitch license plates with non-Western names resemble souvenir keychains, creating inclusivity and an opportunity for all Americans to find their names on these ubiquitous mementos. With this work, Huynh reveals the resilient nature of refugees in shaping the Southern California cultural landscape.