Exhibition @Westbeth Gallery
The Faraway Nearby
Wed–Sun 1–6 PM
Opening reception:
Saturday, March 8, 2025, from 6–8pm
Artists:
Kazumi Tanaka and Jayoung Yoon
sooim lee and Xinyi Liu
Jamie Ho and Junli Song
Lipika Bhargava and Naho Taruishi
Curator: Jiyeon Paik
Assistant curator: Jean Chung
Exhibition Designer: Archtechtonic
Photo Credit: Archtechtonic and The Faraway Nearby
Westbeth Gallery is pleased to present The Faraway Nearby (TFN), a group exhibition featuring eight Asian women artists who engaged in a five-month-long dialogue project curated by Jiyeon Paik. Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s book The Faraway Nearby, this project is indebted to Solnit’s reflections on reading, writing, solitude, and solidarity, which form the conceptual foundation of this curatorial initiative. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation—interwoven with excerpts from the artists’ conversations—the exhibition navigates themes of memory, inheritance, and identity, offering an intricate exploration of personal and collective narratives.
The exhibition opens with a performance by Kyoung eun Kang, a 2023 TFN artist, who reimagines Olga Cabral’s poem Woman Ironing—a former Westbeth resident—through movement and audience interaction. Revisiting Cabral’s portrayal of domestic labor, Kang’s performance bridges past and present, connecting historical perspectives on women’s work to contemporary struggles for recognition and solidarity.
Kazumi Tanaka and Jayoung Yoon reflect on maternal relationships through sculpture and object-based works imbued with deeply personal memories. Their works trace the passage of time, reflecting on how love, loss, and inheritance shape identities across generations.
sooim lee and Xinyi Liu delve into the experiences of immigrant women artists across different generations. lee, who moved to New York in the 1980s, reflects on the roles of wife, mother, and artist, navigating the cultural expectations of her era. Liu, a recent MFA graduate, repeatedly dyes and layers mulberry paper and disposable wipes, transforming these discarded materials into delicate skins, each carrying its own story. As the layers dry, they exist beyond gender and constraint, offering a quiet yet persistent reflection on identity and transformation.
Jamie Ho and Junli Song’s collaborative practice merges photography and video to explore memory, diaspora, and personal history. As second-generation Chinese Americans, they construct layered narratives using modularity and animation, weaving together distinct visual languages to examine how identity is transmitted, reconstructed, and transformed over time.
Lipika Bhargava and Naho Taruishi engage in an abstract dialogue on impermanence and remembrance through photography, drawing, sound, and video. Bhargava’s series of eight paired images contemplates cycles of mortality, while Taruishi documents her family’s visits to ancestral gravestones from 1996 to 2024. Their collaborative piece, Movement of Water(2024), considers land ownership and settler colonialism, intertwining personal histories to broader narratives of displacement and survival.
Alongside, TFN features archival materials from the artists' dialogues alongside contributions from 20 invited respondents participating in TFN’s In Response program. These letters, images, and video clips extend the discussion beyond the gallery walls, enriching the collective engagement and broadening the interpretive scope of the works.
Presented at Westbeth Gallery—a space shaped by the legacies of pioneering women artists such as Diane Arbus, Shigeko Kubota, Elizabeth Murray, Lorraine O’Grady, and Hannah Wilke–TFN unfolds as a dialogue bridging past and present. Weaving together diverse artistic practices, the exhibition considers how stories endure, shift, and take on new meanings over time. In this ongoing exchange, art becomes an act of remembrance and transformation—reclaiming histories, bridging distances, and offering a space where personal and collective narratives continue to evolve.
Major support for The Faraway Nearby is provided by LMCC 2024 Manhattan Arts Grant and New York Foundation for the Arts.
This exhibition is supported by The Jenni Crain Foundation, an initiative dedicated to preserving the legacy of the esteemed artist and curator.