Exhibitions

my hands are monsters who believe in magic features works of Asian diasporic artists that explore the process of unmaking and remaking the self in their work. Focusing on the potential for art as a site of radical reimagination, the exhibition will include a group of artists having a [cross generational] conversation about the liberatory possibilities of the endless, messy, contradictory, and sometimes grotesque process of producing a social identity. At a time when visibility is widely touted as a goal for Asian Americans (and other people of color), it is also one that can prove dangerous. Our relationship to identity becomes especially loaded, lending a particular urgency to the work included in this exhibition. my hands are monsters who believe in magic highlights construction and reinvention – both in the literal, material sense and as an approach to personal, communal, and ancestral histories – to help us see our own potential and the potency inherent in the world around us. The title of the exhibition quotes a line from Ocean Vuong’s poem “Dear Sara” in Time Is a Mother.

About the Curator
Kris Kuramitsu is an independent curator and educator in Los Angeles. As Senior Curator at The Mistake Room in Los Angeles, she organized exhibitions such as Matsumi Kanemitsu: Metamorphic Effects (2014); Cao Fei: Shadow Plays (2015); A Tender Spot: Sky Hopinka and Karrabing Film Collective (2018); and Gaëlle Choisne: Temple of Love – ADORABLE (2019), among others. She curates the Candlewood Arts Festival, a program of temporary public art projects in the Anza Borrego Desert for the Under the Sun Foundation. Additionally, she has organized exhibitions for institutions such as the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Claremont, CA; LAXART, Los Angeles; Instituto Cervantes, Madrid; and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. She has taught at Harvey Mudd College and was the 2022 curatorial resident at Occidental College, where she organized the exhibition Voice a Wild Dream: Moments in Asian American Art and Activism, 1968-2022. She is the recipient of the 2024 Call to Dream Sam Francis Fellowship.

Image: Jarod Lew, Blending in Orange, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.