July 12, 2024
By Gaby Messino
In connection with the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA), UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of Arts and Sciences (IAS) is hosting a multi-sited exhibition bringing together works by international artists whose works engage a history of struggle against prisons and their harms. Seeing Through Stone opened in April, but is now hosting a unique opportunity to walk through the exhibition with one of the artists.
Hương Ngô is a Chicago-based artist whose prints and installations focus on themes of decolonization, refugee epistemologies, and intergenerational memory. Her work has been shown in internationally recognized museums including the MOMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She won a Fullbright scholarship in 2016 and is currently a visiting lecturer at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Ngô’s piece in the exhibition, And the State of Emergency Is Also Always a State of Emergence, features a six-by-four bunk bed frame similar to those seen in prison cells. The installation is inspired by a story told by one of Ngô’s siblings about staying at a detention center in Hong Kong for two years when they were children.
“I’m excited to be in conversation about my work in relationship to the other artists and works in this important exhibition,” says Ngô. Her tour will incorporate other works in Seeing Through Stone to build a bigger narrative around incarceration and arts relationship to it. “Just as immigration detention centers, like the ones on which my work is based, operate in relationship to and not separate from prisons, jails, and other instances of incarceration, artists work in relationship to one another, building on the platforms, power, and voices of our community.”
While Ngô is excited to expand on her own work and her personal connection to incarceration which inspires her art, she also looks forward to speaking about the works of other artists. “While our artworks are often exhibited together, it is rare that we are asked to speak about how our fellow artists move us with their works and their presence in the world. It is through this solidarity that we can work towards more liberatory futures,” she says.
The artist walk through on July 23rd is free and open to the public. It offers an exclusive look into the art world through the work of a top artist. For more about Seeing Through Stone you can check out our press release or visit the exhibition either at the SJMA, IAS, and Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos. The exhibition will be open at all three locations until January 5, 2025.
More Information
Tuesday July 23, 2024
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Institute of Arts & Sciences
100 Panetta Avenue
Santa Cruz, California 95060
Free and open to the public
