my hands are monsters who believe in magic
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 Curator at Large at The Mistake Room in Los Angeles, where she has organized exhibitions and programs such as Matsumi Kanemitsu: Metamorphic Effects (2014); Cao Fei: Shadow Plays (2015); Carlos Amorales: A Film Trilogy (2015); Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue (2016) (co-curator); and A Tender Spot: Sky Hopinka and Karrabing Film Collective (2018); Susu Attar: Isthmus (2018); Gaëlle Choisne: Temple of Love – ADORABLE (2019); and Where the Sea Remembers (2019) (co-curator). As an independent curator, she has organized exhibitions for institutions such as LAXART, Los Angeles; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Instituto Cervantes, Madrid; Paramo, Guadalajara; and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles in addition to managing private art collections. Most recently, she launched the Candlewood Arts Festival—an annual temporary public art exhibition project for the Under the Sun Foundation in the Anza Borrego Desert (2019-present). She teaches 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. Her previous posts include Associate Director for Artis; Programs Director at Creative Link for the Arts, New York; Curator for the collections of Eileen and Peter Norton and the Collection of Eileen Harris Norton; and the Arts Programs Director for the Peter Norton Family Foundation.