AN INSIDE VIEW BY BH

HEATWAVES EXHIBITION

Celebrating AAPI artists from our community

No. 208
Article by:
Abi Lierheimer

Meet the featured artists...

RYAN YAN

"Growing up, I had a hard time understanding, expressing, and accepting my emotions. Now, I explore emotions and our relationship with the uncontrollable on canvas through both random and deliberate gestures."

BASED: Atlanta, GA

BOBBLEHAUS IN 3 WORDS: Radical, Acceptance, Beacon

FAVORITE ALBUM: The Book by Yoasobi

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Bun Factory in Doravilla, GA

SECRET TALENT: Not disappointing my parents

RAMONA WANG

Ramona Jingru Wang (b. 1995, China) is a lens-based artist based on the internet and New York. Her work explores how images intervene with our reality and create connections among people and space, investigating how we care for each other through photographs. She studied in the International Center of Photography-Bard College, and graduated with an MFA in photography from the Pratt Institute, New York.

She has been the recipient of the BARON Prize 2020 with her video work “wish you were not here”, short-listed for Palm* Photo Prize and the winner of the Capture Writing Prize 2021. When she’s not taking photos, she is a designer and has made a photo book called “7-11'', and self-published a newspaper “Family Album , which is exhibited in the Inaugural Photography Triennial at Museum of City of New York in March, 2023.

BASED: Lower East Side, NYC

BOBBLEHAUS IN 3 WORDS: Fun, Community, Youth

FAVORITE ALBUM: PROTECTOR by OHYUNG

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Bo Ky in Chinatown NYC

SECRET TALENT: I make very good Mao's Pork

LUCY MU LI

"I am a Chinese-American, California-based interdisciplinary artist working across painting, photography, and writing. My work often emerges through intimate conversation with Earth, unraveling a world woven by kinship — where interdependencies are exposed, shared languages are spoken, and love stories emerge."

BASED: Southern California

BOBBLEHAUS IN 3 WORDS: Expressive, Vibrant, Energetic

FAVORITE ALBUM: I just spent 6 weeks at an artist residency in Joshua Tree, CA, and ! by Lara Somogyi is a magical and ambient harp album that fit the landscape so beautifully.

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Din Tai Fung and The Yellow Deli, in CA, a long-time favorite with a transportive space run by a lovely community.

VON KOLK

Von Hyin Kolk is a visual artist living and working in New York City. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in 2019. Kolk had her first solo exhibition at Sister Gallery in Adelaide, Australia. Since then, she has had her paintings and sculptures exhibited at Spring Break Art Fair (2022) in New York City and has participated in various group shows throughout New York.

In 2023, Kolk will have her first two-person exhibition at Tchotchke Gallery opening June 27 in Brooklyn. Kolk was also featured on Artsy's Artists on the Rise page.

BASED: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

BOBBLEHAUS IN 3 WORDS: Light Up Fishes

FAVORITE ALBUM: Dogsbody by Model/Actriz

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: I have many favorites: Winson Brooklyn and Tonchin Brooklyn. In Chinatown: House of Joy, Ping's, Dim Sum Gogo

SECRET TALENT: Cooking meals under $5

EMILY B. YANG

Born and raised in the United States, Emily B. Yang's artistic practice is inspired by traditional Chinese symbols for longevity and their evolution as they migrated with the diaspora. She researches how Chinese immigrants adapted existing symbols and invented new ones to tell stories of their new contexts, with each migration leading to a different multicultural design language and identity.

While referencing familiar motifs from Chinese porcelain and combining them with her own new imagined symbols, she invokes a speculative feminist interpretation of Confucian ideals, matrilineal heritage, and ancestor worship in her ceramic and block print work. 

BASED: Greenpoint, Brooklyn <3

BOBBLEHAUS IN 3 WORDS: Experimental, Futuristic, Community

FAVORITE ALBUM: Joni Mitchell - Blue

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Bo Ky in Chinatown

SECRET TALENT: Shucking oysters

KIKI ARANITA

Kiki Aranita’s intersecting, simultaneous careers as a professional chef, food writer, Hawaiian sauce entrepreneur and fiber artist have forced her to confront the nuances of her identity through food. By making, serving, and selling the food of her youth spent in Hawai’i and Hong Kong, she allays her own homesickness and that of those who consume her food. Her fiber sculptures function in a similar fashion, but they are consumed through looking. 

BASED: Lower East Side, NYC (my living room)

BOBBLEHAUS IN 3 WORDS: Representation, Fun, Quirky

FAVORITE ALBUM: Kupaoa's Bumbye

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Congee Village in Chinatown NYC

SECRET TALENT: I can lift a suitcase and tell you exactly how much it weighs. I'm a human scale.

MAX AHLBORN

"I'm a Chinese American photographer based in Brooklyn! I shoot mostly on film and love trying to tell the story of the people / places I encounter. This series is on the transportation system in Tokyo!"

BASED: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

BOBBLEHAUS IN 3 WORDS: Friends. Fun. Art

FAVORITE ALBUM: Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads

FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Chiko in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

SECRET TALENT: Basketball

BOBBLEHAUS presents HEATWAVES

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, July 13th, 6-8pm RSVP HERE

WHERE: Bobblehaus Gallery, 180 Orchard St NYC

EXHIBITION RUN: July 13th - August 31st

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