The Appearance: Art of the Asian Diaspora in Latin America & the Caribbean

The Appearance: Art of the Asian Diaspora in Latin America & the Caribbean is the first exhibition in New York City to center the artistic production of the Asian diaspora in the region from the 1940s to the present. Focusing on postwar and contemporary art, the exhibition showcases the work of twenty-seven artists from fourteen countries working in a range of artistic mediums including painting, sculpture, performance, photography, and video, to shed light into strategies and themes that resonate across a wide array of Asian diasporic practice throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The exhibition embraces and performs the multiple and interrelated meanings embedded in the notion of appearance, inspired by Japanese Brazilian artist Lydia Okumura’s 1975 print by the same title. From acts of appearing and becoming visible—including different types of apparitions—to the idea of impressions and physical resemblance, artists in the show grapple with the complexities of negotiating (in)visibility, revisiting and remaking family archives and stories, and engaging and reconfiguring spiritual practices. The show also addresses abstraction as a formal strategy linked to language, the senses, and the body in the context of the Americas’ postwar art. 

Conceived as an appearance in and of itself, the show sheds light on the often-overlooked experiences and artistic trajectories of Asian diasporic subjects and collectives across Latin America and the Caribbean, casting them as both grounded in their particular context and constitutive of broader transnational histories. 

To accompany the show, we will present a series of public programs and publish a catalogue. 

This exhibition is co-curated by Tie Jojima, associate curator and manager of Exhibitions at Americas Society in New York, and Yudi Rafael, independent curator and researcher based in São Paulo, Brazil.