STANFORD, Calif. — Some of the first artworks I encountered on my visit to Spirit House were doors. James Klahr’s wooden doors, set along the exterior walls of the Cantor Arts Center, are inscribed with motifs commonly found in the Philippines. LED lights programmed along the gaps at the bottom give the illusion of a person passing through, but of course the door is just a facade. Similarly, Do Ho Su’s “Doorknobs: Houses in Horsham, London, New York, Providence, Seoul, Venice” (2021) is a collection of delicate door handles sewn from colorful translucent fabrics and based on those found in his previous residences. The handles are detached from their original function, too delicate to touch. Both of these works refuse passage while hinting at a presence beyond what meets the eye. Klahr’s doors hold the illusion of a passerby, Su’s hold the memory of a former space.
Organized by Stanford University’s Asian American Arts Initiative, the artists in “Spirit House” struggle with being trapped and denied passage in the intellectual impasses of Asian immigrant personal, familial, global narratives, and racial identity. These works are all spirit houses, making visible the ghosts that haunt Asian Americans and, in so doing, learning how to live with them.
James Klar, “Nobody’s Home (Manila)” (2020), wooden door, LED lights, microcontroller
In popular culture, ghosts are depicted as beings between worlds, but that is often because there is something unresolved about the past. Asian Americans know a thing or two about being between worlds. And we remain a ghostly presence in America’s racial discourse, never hurting enough to require serious discussion. Even when Asian Americans are the targets of overt violence, like the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, we expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to convince others that anti-Asian racism still exists. Or, as we have seen with the recent dismantling of affirmative action, we are a wedge used to further strengthen oppressive structures.
In her groundbreaking 2001 book, Race Melancholy, Anne Chen used Freud’s concept of melancholy to examine how America’s discussion of race remains mired in a state of unresolved grief, and how the country’s collective obsession with racial grievances has focused the conversation on “getting over race” rather than finding ways to grieve appropriately. The artists in this exhibition know that we cannot easily “get over” the history and processes of racialization and the devastating transgenerational effects left by U.S. imperialism and militarism in Asia; rather, they seem to ask how we grieve, understand, honor, and ultimately live with these ghosts.
Kelly Akashi, “Inheritance” (2022), Postonite, lost-wax cast dichroic lead crystal, heirloom (grandmother’s)
Many of the artists exhibiting at Spirit House have family stories that are intimately connected to one of several collective traumas experienced by Asians and Asian Americans in the last century. The central structure in Greg Ito’s The Weight of Your Shadow (2023) is a small building reminiscent of the barracks where Japanese Americans like Ito’s grandparents were interned by the United States during World War II. The building is surrounded by heirlooms passed down from the artist’s grandmother and set on a reflective blue surface. In this work, viewers can literally see themselves alongside Ito’s biography, demonstrating how our own identities are interwoven with the stories of our families, communities, and ancestors.
Kelly Akashi’s bronze and glass works, made from casts of her own hands, are adorned with her grandmother’s jewelry and feature natural elements such as twigs, stones, and pinecones found in Poston, Arizona, the site of an internment camp where the artist’s family was held. Her research shows that many of the pines standing today were planted by Japanese Americans who were originally interned there, and serve as solemn memorials to a painful history. Akashi’s colored glass sculptures, such as “Inheritance” (2022), seem to glow, as if the act of casting has transformed her body into spirit, allowing her to touch this moment in her family’s history through time.
Foreground: Greg Ito, The Weight of Your Shadow (2023), MDF, powder coated cast aluminum, stone, mirror-finished plexiglass, plastic, enamel. Background: Namita Paul, Testimony (2023), canvas, thread, gold leaf, paint, lentils, wheat berries, assorted textiles, photography Jarrod Liu, (left) Untitled (Mom on Couch) (2021), archival pigment print. (right) Untitled (Wedding Picture) (2021), archival pigment print
Jarrod Liu’s photo series “In Between You and Your Shadow” is based on Liu’s adulthood discovery that his mother was engaged to Vincent Chin. Chin’s brutal, racist murder and the killer’s light sentence have galvanized and reshaped the Asian American community. Liu’s mother agreed to be photographed on the condition that her face be hidden, and through a series of lighting and compositional moves, she becomes both the subject of these photographs and a ghostly, enigmatic presence, refusing to be used as a political symbol. Instead, she asserts her own and minority individuals and communities’ right to be invisible.
Kwon Hee-soo’s moving, sometimes humorous installation also deals with the theme of selective visibility. Kwon inserts avatars of a fictional feminist religion into childhood photographs and family videos. The avatars are only visible when viewing the images from certain angles, leaving visitors to wonder if they have actually seen them. By retroactively inserting these images into decades-old photographs and videos, the artist may be recognizing that these guardian spirits have always been there, protecting Kwon and the women in her family, or she may be using them as a way to grieve for lives that might have been.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is a painting by Nina Molloy, in which her great-grandfather, grandfather, and mother are each depicted in detail in various states of translucency. It combines the density of a Dutch altarpiece, the flat perspective of a Korean Chaekory painting, and the dollhouse-like structure of a Thai spirit house. Loaded with representations of objects, materials, and ornaments commonly found in Southeast Asia, the monumental scale and hyperrealist expression of this masterpiece evoke a sense of religious ecstasy. The painting represents the central concept of the exhibition: that art can collapse time, ideas, and memory. Just as people create spirit houses to honor and protect local spirits before beginning their construction in Thailand, the artists of Spirit House show that art is a way of constructing and understanding meaning, a way of understanding, grieving, and ultimately caring for the countless collective and personal spirits that have shaped the Asian diaspora.
Kwon Hee-soo, “Leymusoom Spirit House” (2024), multimedia installation. Comprising: “Premolt 5” (2022), lenticular light box, “Saint Leymusoom” (2024), found objects, LED light panel, lenticular print, “Premolt 15” (2023), lenticular print, LED light panel, wooden frame, “A Ritual for Metamorphosis” (2019), single channel video of color and sound displayed on a 20″ Samsung Galaxy S8. “L_F-2.0-2024_I-D_C4-B4_1993” (2024), pigment print on vinyl Do Ho Su, “Doorknob: Horsham, London, New York, Providence, Seoul, Venice Homes” (2021), polyester fabric and stainless steel wire Jiab Prachakul, “Connecting” (2020), acrylic on canvas Tida Whitney Lek, “Refuge” (2023), acrylic, pastel and oil on canvas Cathy Lu, “Banana Tree” (2023), ceramics and incense Timothy Lai, “Accusation” (2022), oil on canvas
Spirit House will be on view at Cantor Arts Center (328 Lomita Drive, Stanford, CA) through January 26, 2025. The exhibition was curated by Alisa Pichaman Alexander, associate curator of modern and contemporary art at Cantor Arts Center and co-director of the Asian American Arts Initiative, and Katherine Kuah, curatorial assistant at the Asian American Arts Initiative.
