Monthly Artist: May 08

Horatio Hung-Yan Law was born and raised in Hong Kong and came to the US at age 16. Portland has been his home since 1994. In his earlier work, he explored the history of Asian immigration and the immigrant experience. He uses common cultural material to create meaning and metaphor. His work excavates the ambivalent topography of personal and collective identities in the contemporary global culture. More recently, he has been attracted to working collaboratively with communities, to create work that examines relevant topics and issues of our time. He is attracted to art's potential to activate the complex and dynamic relationship between individuals and communities.

Kartz Ucci is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Oregon. She received her MFA in 1995 from York University in Toronto, Canada and has been teaching at the University of Oregon since 2004, prior engagements include York University, McMaster University and Ryerson University in Canada.

A central metaphor in her work is the ‘location of desire’ and the ‘pursuit of happiness’. She has an unabashed interest in the romantic and prefers, though not exclusively, to work with the merging of two conceptual strategies. In working with contemporary notions of appropriation, she re-authors and recodes existing texts, musical pieces and films. In addition to the use of an imposed algorithm, another common element in the work is the recursive relationship between the original and its recoded meaning. Relevant texts, ideological statements and specific substrates or visual representations (imagined or real) expand the context and content of her subject matter, either physically and/or philosophically. Her work is produced with the medium that best conveys its conceptual content and is actualized through light, sound, video, performance, photography and text.

Exhibitions for 2010 include OPTICA, Montreal (Canada), Linfield Gallery, McMinnville (Oregon) and inclusion in the upcoming Oregon biennial titled Portland 2010. To view her work visit her web site, http://www.uoregon.edu/~ucci/kartzucciwork/a>.

China-on-Willamette by Horatio Hung-Yan Law

May 1, 2008

In the last several years, our country’s cultural historians have slowly begun to tell the story of the early Chinese immigrant experience in the U.S.  Denied the opportunity to own land, gain citizenship or transport their families to our mainland, these almost exclusively male Chinese laborers suffered deep hardship, all the while clearing much of the land that is now most prized in our great cities located along the entire stretch of the west coast – Vancouver, B.C. to Los Angeles.  For his May project, AiR guest artist, Horatio Hung-Yan Law -  a native of Hong Kong but New Yorker since the age of 16, will explore how our cities might look and feel differently had the Chinese had more opportunity to assert themselves on the cities that they so painstakingly transformed on behalf of others.  In a three-part installation that traverses both the AiR studio and the South Waterfront neighborhood, Horatio will use common materials that we associate with either a Chinese or Asian lineage – rice, bamboo, chopsticks, t’ai chi – to play with how the South Waterfront district might be different today had the Chinese laborers been able to establish a presence there.  Please join Horatio for his opening reception on Saturday, May 3rd from 11a-2p in the AiR studio, and for the free t’ai chi workshops that accompany his residency in preparation for the T’ai Chi for 1,000 gathering on Saturday, May 31st.  In addition to the workshop on May 3rd during the reception, workshop times include:  May 14th, 10a-noon; May 21st, 6-8p; May 28th, 6-8p. To sign-up, please contact Horatio at: horatiolaw@gmail.com

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