As founder & chief designer, I collaborate with artists, museums, non-profits, and companies to curate exhibitions, websites, events & other artistic experiences.

As creative director, I partner with founder & nuke expert Lovely Umayam to envision compelling ways to draw public attention to nuclear policy, science & history. In particular, we amplify the complex relationships these topics have with indigenous people & other communities of color.

BOMBSHELLTOE.COM

Dahlak Brathwaite, Nico Cary and I have operated as iLL-Literacy for over a decade. As a restless arts collective, we’ve found ourselves on tour as a funk band, in theater festivals as actors, in the studio as music producers and in universities as arts activism scholars.

ILL-LITERACY.COM

The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center is not located in a building, but instead exists as ephemeral experiences throughout the world. As Curator of Digital & Emerging Practice, I investigate how artists, activists & thinkers inform our notions of self & society.

SMITHSONIANAPA.ORG

Above image: Bravespace cover art by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya

Bravespace is a compilation of original songs, sounds, and meditations created by Asian American women and non-binary artists and musicians, presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Arriving amidst a period of collective trauma and heightened xenophobic violence, Bravespace offers listeners a refuge for contemplation, grief, and growth.

Commissioned at the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, APAC spent almost three years collaborating with these musicians, artists, and cultural practitioners to vividly capture how an intensely challenging moment could lead to personal discovery and collective healing. Bravespace, which received critical support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, adds complexity to the greater landscape of meditation and healing arts tools by centering perspectives that have long been marginalized.

Curated and produced by
Adriel Luis
Hollis Wong-Wear
Erika Shimizu

Participating artists
Low Leaf
MILCK
Arushi Jain
Our Daughter
Kwonyin
Erika Shimizu
Ana Roxanne
Hollis
mayx
JusMoni
Chong the Nomad
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Music

Listen on all platforms

The Smithsonian Institution’s public narrative often glosses over the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842), the historic endeavor led by Charles Wilkes that seized over 4000 specimens, artifacts, and human remains throughout Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the western coasts of the Americas, which later became the foundation of the Smithsonian’s collections.

Today, the Smithsonian is revered for holding one of the world’s most expansive collections, a world-class resource for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Yet, the framework of the Smithsonian as a flagship for American exceptionalism is in growing tension with campaigns to highlight communities of color which are increasingly intersectional, fluid, and diasporic.

The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has met these challenges by introducing Culture Labs to instill emerging practices and community principles. This paper investigates the history and implications of museum programming and education practices that engage and transmute the imperial legacies of institutions.

Read in the Journal of Museum Education, Vol 47

Read the open access version

Above image: Daisy Garnanez, photo by Carmille Garcia

Ways of Knowing is a multimedia arts project exploring how generations of Navajo stories and community organizing became tools to overcome the mental and physical trauma of uranium mines and nuclear tests. By sharing these narratives through immersive video, essays, and social media clips, Ways of Knowing presents how nuclear weapons production connect with issues such as forced displacement, cultural loss, and environmental exploitation. This project aims to give these stories and the people behind them a much-deserved spotlight – to show that their history and knowledge matter – and that their experiences are a relevant and essential piece of the global conversation on nuclear weapons.

The primary work-in-progress for Ways of Knowing is a 360 film that examines the geographic and historic landscape of Navajo Nation. Directed by Kayla Briët, the narrative unfolds through the voices of Navajo community members whose lives have been impacted by uranium mining.

Ways of Knowing is a production of Bombshelltoe. Co-produced by Lovely Umayam, Sunny Dooley & Adriel Luis. Film directed by Kayla Briët. Photography by Carmille Garcia.

WAYSOFKNOWING.US

Museums are increasingly expressing interest in equity, social justice, and even decolonization, in large part due to their growing investment in online spaces where such topics have risen to the top of public consciousness. But this investment has also led to heightened dependency on internet and social media platforms which center profit and gain, often through data mining, invasive advertisements, misinformation, and other behavior which run counter to principles of open and democratic society. Thus, museums’ aspirations to be participants and leaders in public service are at odds with the capitalistic endeavors of the companies which they have tethered to their notions of success. This paper investigates the relationship between museums and exploitive data collection practices, from their colonial histories to their uncertain futures. In recognition of decolonizing methodologies, the writer invites the reader through personal narrative, cross-disciplinary research, and a few hot takes.

READ THE ARTICLE

The concept for Bigger Than the Internet began in 2018 when I was invited by scholar Dana Allen-Greil to offer a guest lecture for a museum studies course at Georgetown University on digital curation. While I began writing this with the intention of formally publishing it in an academic journal, upon completing it I decided to share it in the spirit of the thinkers who inspired it and who I reference throughout – widely accessible, open for community feedback, and free. While I am open to sharing this with formal publications, I am committed to presenting this research and these ideas as part of an ongoing conversation unrestricted by exclusionary forums and paywalls. I am grateful for scholars Jaclyn Roessel, Wendy Ng, and Audrey Hudson for contributing edits and feedback, and I’m honored to have debuted this on June 2, 2021 through [COLLECTIVE LIBERATION] DISRUPT, DISMANTLE, MANIFEST, an equity coalition convening facilitated by Museums and Race, MASS Action, Museum Workers Speak, Death to Museums, The Incluseum, Museums Are Not Neutral, Empathetic Museum, and Visitors of Color; andon June 3, 2021 in an episode of DISCOVERY presented by the Knight Foundation.

The Color Curtain Project is a series of dinner parties and art book presentations that bring individuals of African- and Asian-American identities together. By breaking bread, learning history, and sharing stories, the project encourages constructive dialogue around political and social justice challenges that entwine African- and Asian-American experiences today.

The project takes its name from The Color Curtain (1956), a travelogue by Richard Wright, who authored the American literary classics Native Son and Black Boy. The Color Curtain summarizes Wright’s observations as an African-American reporter covering the Bandung Conference — an epic convening in April 1955 held in Bandung, Indonesia between twenty-nine Asian and African countries eager to establish a coalition denouncing racism, colonialism, and nuclear war. The Color Curtain is not a comprehensive or technical account of what transpired in Bandung; Wright did not delve into the political and bureaucratic dealings between statesmen. Rather, The Color Curtain offers a personal snapshot of his experience witnessing the collision of Afro-Asian identities, and their collective struggle to find political, economic, and social freedom after many decades of colonial rule.

Many people do not know about The Bandung Conference or The Color Curtain, but their  themes, achievements, and shortcomings still reverberate today. The Color Curtain Project aims to celebrate and critically reflect on the connections between past and present by offering a contemporary interpretation over dinner and urging guests to think about what has changed, if at all, between the Afro-Asian diasporic relationship since 1955.

The Color Curtain Project is a collaboration between Washington, DC- and New York-based scholars, artists, and entrepreneurs: Tammy Nguyen, Aerica Shimizu Banks, Seda Nak, Desirée Venn Frederic, Lovely Umayam & Adriel Luis.

THECOLORCURTAINPROJECT.COM

Lifelines is a collection of personal reflections about the experiences of nuclear policy and technical practitioners during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020 - 2021). Many of these stories come from women in the field who, like everyone else, suffered the immediate physical and mental strain of this crisis: fear of widespread illness and death; the loneliness of lockdown; and the exhaustion from a frenetic lifestyle that collapsed the boundary between personal and professional space.

Yet they also wrestle with biases and challenges — as nuclear experts who double as mothers, or junior and mid-careers reckoning with gender barriers reinscribed in virtual, socially-distant work environments — that complicate their vision of a secure future for the world and for themselves.

Introduction by
Lovely Umayam

Illustrations by
Elisa Reverman

Essays by
Victoria Wu
Anu Damale
Chantell Murphy
Ana Velasco

Anecdotes from
The Gender Champions for Nuclear Policy Gendered Impacts of Covid-19 Survey

Web design by
Adriel Luis

Visit Lifelines

Above image: From 3AM, Still in the Present.

Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA) presents Time Sensitive, an exhibition of works by Myanmar artist collective, 3AM, curated by Adriel Luis. Since 2016, members Ma Ei, Ko Latt, and Yadanar Win have collaborated on works that dissolve the lines between art and activism, performance, and media.

3AM's work responds to social conditions that are pressing in Myanmar, but that resonate throughout the world – the repression of social critique, the complexities of queer life, and the effects of globalization, to name a few. Ever since Myanmar's military coup in February this year, internet shutdowns, public uprisings, and police violence against demonstrators and artists, the nation's turmoils have been placed back in the global spotlight.

Tephra ICA is pleased to show 3AM's works in the United States for the first time in support of the collective's efforts to share Myanmar's lived experiences, critical perspectives, and radical imaginations with the rest of the world.

3AM: Time Sensitive was viewable at the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston, VA from August 28, 2021 to January 8, 2022.

DETAILS @ TEPHRAICA.ORG

Wavelength was a series of art projects presented at the 2022 Smithsonian Folklife Festival that demonstrated the connections between humans and sea life. Works included: a mosaic of a whale and dolphin composed of origami sea creatures folded through community sessions led by artist and legendary skateboarder Peggy Oki; a series of stone shark sculptures created by Tongva artist and scholar L Frank Manriquez; a life-sized baby humpback whale sculpture and an installation of stickers depicting fish names in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi by artist and ocean engineer Jane Chang Mi; and screen prints by Soul & Ink Crew.

Photos by Phillip R. Lee

This mural on Mosco St in Manhattan’s Chinatown imagines a future where we transcend white supremacy and anti-Asian violence. It was envisioned and painted with youth in the W.O.W. Project community in Chinatown, and BIPOC community members. The mural depicts a youth holding a red envelope casting a spotlight on Chinatown elders in monumental embrace as indigenous plants of Lenapehoking (NYC) grow from the concrete and soar into the sky above them. 🌱 Starting this fall, visitors to the mural will be able to use Augmented Reality to see the mural animate to life and immerse themselves a virtual healing space of ambient music and letters depicting wishes for the future written by community members. Visitors globally are invited to share an offering that manifests safety, mutual care, and communal protection for the future of our Asian community in a virtual mural experience.

Funded by:
Wing on Wo Projects
Smithsonian APA Center
NYU A/P/A Institute

Producing Team:
Mei Lum, Denise Zhou and Adriel Luis

Assistants & Teaching Artists:
Singha Hon, Zoraida Ingles, Jia Sung, Tomie Arai

🌹Graphic Design Team:
Art direction: Tiffany Jen
Type Design & Layout: Michael Enten

DETAILS @ JESSXSNOW.COM

What does it mean to be present in a year marked with so much absence? When we look back and say “I was there,” where will that have been? In this online exhibition, four artists respond to shifting notions of selfhood, togetherness, civic participation, and what it means to be a part of this moment.

There, There features new works by Julia Kwon, Lisa Park, Nara Park, and Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, and is curated by Adriel Luis.

It is a part of IA&A at Hillyer’s Sister Cities grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to facilitate artistic exchange between Washington, DC and Seoul, South Korea. Many thanks to our partners at The Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C., and all the collaborators and artists involved in this exhibition.

Featuring

This online exhibitions runs until January 15, 2021

VIEW THE EXHIBITION

We are able to exhibit courage and strength in our greatest moments – but what about our most impossible times? Where do we find wisdom within the vast unknown? How do we stay grounded when everything is up in the air?

Care Package is a collection of creative offerings by artists, writers, and scholars who the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center collaborated with in recent years. The works take a range of approaches to addressing uncertainty, anxiety, and grief through vision, reflection, and healing. Most have been exhibited in past programs, but have never been made widely accessible until now.

Featuring
Yumi Sakugawa
Jess X. Snow, Kit Yan & Peter Pa
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem and Qais Essar
Whakarongo by Jack Gray
Photosynth by Low Leaf, Alex Abalos & Adam Labuen
Current, I by Lehua M. Taitano
Tea(r)ism, by Naoko Wowsugi
Kitchen Remedies People's Kitchen Collective
The Corner of Heart-to-Hearts by Chad Shomura & Yumi Sakugawa
What Time Is It On The Clock Of The World? by Nobuko Miyamoto & Juan Perez

VIEW THE EXHIBITION

Above image: Rosanna Raymond performing BackHand and Away (2019) amidst Miranda Smitheram's Ko Pikiwhara Te Mauka / And Here I Visit the Bones (2019)

2019 situated us in a host of collisions between our complex histories, enduring systems and beliefs, greater awareness of our ecological pressures and our future aspirations. People throughout the world and from various walks of life recognized that the solutions to today’s greatest challenges, inevitable tensions and intersections can only be realized by seeking compatibility of aspirations without denying these fundamental cultural and cognitive complexities amongst one another.  Featuring world-class artists, scholars and cultural practitioners – all critically examining the notion of civility – Te Whāinga was a unique opportunity to explore what it truly means to coexist within our communities, societies, and humanity.

Te Whāinga was produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and Auckland Museum (curated by Dina Jezdic, Kālewa Correa, Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis & Adriel Luis) and took place at Silo 6 and Silo Park, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand in October 2019.

Featuring
Ahsin Ahsin
Rodney Bell
Marc Conaco
Elliot Collins
Maria Dumlao
Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi
Erin Fae
Tanu Gago
Jack Gray
Rebecca Ann Hobbs
Hina Kneubuhl
In*ter*is*land Collective
Kerry Ann Lee
Qiane Matata-Sipu
Carl F.K. Pao
Rosanna Raymond
Miranda Smitheram
Kereama Taepa
Rosabel Tan
Tufala Meri (Reina & Molana Sutton)
Pati Solomona Tyrell

TEWHAINGA.COM

Elevator Pitch is an interactive art installation that celebrates New Orleans as a multi-sensory musical experience. Created by New Orleans Airlift, Christine Sun Kim, and Rick Snow, it is the Music Box Village’s latest “musical house” structure, offering visitors a visceral, innovative encounter with sound. Elevator Pitch is inspired by Kim’s childhood memories of crowding elevators with her Deaf friends, and shouting so loudly that they could feel the vibrations of each others’ voices. Meanwhile, elevators are often known to hearing people as sites of “awkward silence,” thus the concept of this installation challenges when and where various people have a voice. Born Deaf herself, Kim approaches Elevator Pitch by investigating how Deaf communities of New Orleans experience a city so deeply defined by music, and by highlighting how Deaf people are vital to this culture of sound. This piece is developed in collaboration with local composer and educator Rick Snow, whose work involves instruments, lighting, media, and sculpture to create immersive experiences; and New Orleans Airlift, the art collective and architectural team behind the Music Box Village. Airlift has stewarded an environment of creative collaboration, with the goal of widening access to sound and music to communities locally, nationally, and globally.

Elevator Pitch is presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center with generous support from the Smithsonian Year of Music, Smithsonian Women’s Committee, and Shift Design.

Elevator Pitch features the voices of thirteen members of the Deaf community of Southeast Louisiana
Fallon Frederick
Jay Isch
Natalie Delgado
Ari Latino
Kimberly Durette
Mary Hoang
David Welch
Brittany Welch
Jimmy Gore
Grace Graugnard
Walker Estes
Sarah Tullier
Tate Tullier

What if our health depended upon telling the truth about what is happening to us? This multimedia spoken word experience reimagines Death as a vital vein of Pasefika experience, rather than an end to our island narratives. Featuring an all-female lineup of performers representing Fiji, Samoa, the Marshall Islands and Hawai‘i, She Who Dies to Live represents a convergence of different Pasifika voices, and of various art forms and storytelling methods.

She Who Dies To Live features Jocelyn Kapumealani Ng, Kathy Jetñil Kijiner, Terisa Siagatonu, and Jahra "Rager" Wasasala, and portions are directed by Lyz Soto. It is produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Chapters of the production were presented live in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi as a part of ʻAe Kai: A Culture Lab on Convergence; Salt Lake City, Utah as a part of Pasifika First Fridays; and Brisbane, Australia as a part of the Pacific Arts Association Symposium at the Gallery of Modern Art.

AFTEREARTH is an immersive short film, directed by Jess X. Snow, about how four women from different parts of the world draw their understandings of motherhood through connections with the environment. Featuring a chant by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a poem by Isabella Borgeson, a song by Kayla Briët, and a heartfelt reflection between Wan Ping Oshiro and her son Kit Yan, AFTEREARTH is ideally experienced as a 3-channel installation.

AFTEREARTH debuted at the ʻAe Kai Culture Lab and has since been screened at campuses and festivals throughout the United States.

Director: Jess X. Snow
Co-Producers: Kit Yan & Adriel Luis
Production Designer: Peter Pa
Starring: Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Isabella Borgeson, Kayla Briët, Wan Ping Oshiro & Kit Yan

AFTEREARTHFILM.COM

Fashion Forecasts imagines an alternate futuristic reality where everyday fashion is spiritual, intersectional, intergenerational, collaborative, sustainable, and influenced by different Asian and Asian American histories, cultures, and traditions. The exhibition and book features new clothing and accessories that may emerge as identity, technology, and environment evolve. Representing the multiple stages of the fashion process—from design to manufacturing to adornment—she shows that fashion, like identity, can be simultaneously personal and performative, serious and whimsical, instinctive and avant-garde.

Originally commissioned for the Crosslines Culture Lab in 2016, in September 2018 an expanded version of the book was published and distributed by Retrofit Comics, with a book launch and exhibition at Pearl River Mart in NYC.

Photos by Hanifa Haris

Above image: Chiang Tai, Traffic Island Series (2017)

Well, of course we’re obsessed with authenticity. Why shouldn’t we be? Our news is fake, our food is genetically modified, and we’ve even trained ourselves to stop answering the phone because it’s usually a bot calling. The thin line between reality and fantasy has thickened into a world in purgatory – and it’s here that we encounter the artists featured in ALLLLLL NATURAL. Each of the works in this show uniquely illustrates the tensions between what is and what isn’t. They question if all that emerges from the earth is necessarily real, and if that which is made in our hands and our minds is immediately synthetic. Composed of materials that are organic, manufactured, or of dubious origin, the artists here beckon us to suspend our grip on reality, and recognize that the very core of human nature is our instinct to make believe.

ALLLLLL NATURAL is on view at School 33 Art Center in Baltimore from October 12 – November 24, 2018.

Featuring

Above image: Kay Gordon, Cot (2017)

When someone says “make yourself at home,” what are they really asking of you? Are you supposed to fashion the place in such a way that it feels intimate to you, or are you to adjust your sense of intimacy in the first place? Uprooted is a show that recognizes both as viable pathways to belonging. The works presented here rest in the tension between intimate and alien. The artists express that being at home is an active relationship with place, an ongoing practice in making the foreign familiar, and that being rooted isn’t the same as staying put.

Uprooted featured work from an open submission that I selected as the exhibition’s juror. It showed at IA&A at Hillyer, and was the first independent exhibition that I curated in Washington, D.C.

Featuring
Jenny Balisle
Mills Brown
Kay Gordon
Jessica Frances Grégoire
Stacy Isenbarger
Niloufar Kazemzadeh
Katie Laton
Ruth Lozner
Jillian MacMaster
Mi-Hee Nahm
Bundith Phunsombatlert
Judith Pratt
Ann Stoddard

Above image: Chad Shomura & Linh Huỳnh, Earthly Correspondences (2017)

Ae Kai, the shoreline, brings together elements stretching from mountain to ocean and serves as a gathering place for exchange and convergence. Traditionally in Hawai‘i, some of the most important conversations are held at ‘Ae Kai when the sun is up and the waves are out.

‘Ae Kai: A Culture Lab on Convergence look place in the former site of Foodland in Ala Moana Center, an 18,000 square foot supermarket situated in the neighborhood between Waikiki and Kaka‘ako, and explored the meeting points of humanity and nature in Hawai‘i, the Pacific Islands and beyond. Following 2016’s transformational Culture Labs–CrossLines in Washington, D.C. and CTRL+ALT in New York City–‘Ae Kai continued the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s practice of community building through curated artmaking. The biggest Culture Lab to date, ‘Ae Kai features participating artists, scholars and practitioners mostly based or rooted in Hawai‘i, with the majority identifying as Pacific Islanders.

Photos by Tara Rock.

‘Ae Kai was produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (curated by Kālewa Correa, Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis & Adriel Luis and took place at the former site of Foodland in Ala Moana, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi in July 2017.

Featuring
Maile Andrade
Rosanna Raymond
Léuli Māzyār Lunaʻi Eshraghi
Ricky Tagaban
Havana Libre
Craig Santos Perez + Brandy Nālani McDougal
Lehua Taitano + Lisa Jarrett
Kayla Briët
Abigail Kahilikia Romanchak + Charles Cohan
Sloane Leong
Monica Jahan Bose in collaboration with Hina Kneubuhl + Sloane Leong
Adam Labuen + Low Leaf in collaboration with Alex Abalos
Robin Lasser + Adrienne Pao
Ane Bakutis, Jamie Makasobe + Hina Kneubuhl
Nicole Moore
Chad Shomura + Linh Huỳnh
Kit Yan, Peter Pa + Jess X Snow
Angel Chang
Kayla Briët
Wooden Wave
Sid M. Dueñas
Keanu Sai
CHELOVE + MasPaz
Charles Jean-Pierre + Keanu Sai
Tom Pohaku Stone
Ian Masterson
Carl Pao
Aloha Got Soul
Wiena Lin
Shizu Saldamando
Naoko Wowsugi
Katelin Lili’inoe Rose Branco
Jahra ‘Rager’ Wasasala, Jocelyn Kapumealani Ng, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner + Terisa Siagatonu
John “Prime” Hina
Solomon Enos
Aaron Kawai‘ae‘a
Calvin Hoe
Maikai‘i JK Tubbs
Words Beats & Life

VISIT SITE

Above image: Hye Yeon Nam, still from Cheeeeese (2014)

It takes so much to move a life. To be an immigrant, one endures relocation in many flavors — physical, mental, social. One endures recontextualization. Immigration is a unique kind of teleportation, one which requires you to leave behind certain pieces, to recover or reinvent those pieces upon arrival. Immigration is so much more than an act or a moment. It is an experience shared by many but understood by few. It is a rite of passage, in every sense of those words. During a complex time like now, we are tempted to frame immigration as a simple matter. It isn’t. And the artists in Hurry Up and Wait offer glimpses into some of the many complex steps between and beyond getting from Point A to B. This body of work does not attempt to present immigration in a nutshell, nor does it seek to fan the flames of any heated debates. It is simply a body, and expression of nuances and complexities, as we are.

Hurry Up and Wait was on view at the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia from September to December 2017.

Featuring:
Pritha Bhattacharyya
Sanjana Bijlani
Melissa Chen
Yujane Chen
Maria Dumlao
Monica Kane
Caroline Key
Ahree Lee
Hye Yeon Nam
JJ Lee and Mei Lee Ogden
Jermaine Ollivierre
Keven Quach
Yumi Janairo Roth
Rea Christina Sampilo
Catzie Vilayphonh

Above image: Kaylah Waite, Mercedes (2017)

Ever since the invention of fire, humans have approached technology with intrigue, bewilderment and audacity – sometimes all at the same time. The work submitted for this exhibit presented a treasure trove of ways that artists attempt to tame this flame, and here I learned that technology and media-based art is not merely a genre or medium, but rather a layer of reality that will inevitably become present in all forms of creative expression. While artists demonstrated various levels of expertise in their chosen technologies, I didn’t select pieces based on how impressive the platforms were, or even how masterfully the artists used them. Instead, I chose works that showed the complex (and sometimes messy) relationship between emerging technologies and one of humanity’s oldest inventions, communication. Technology can be an obstacle, a distraction or a placeholder for storytelling, and I chose works that insisted on making their points in spite of these challenges. The works presented here may demonstrate new ways of looking at media, but more importantly, they are new ways of looking at ourselves.

Glitch featured work from an open submission that I selected as the exhibition’s juror. It showed at Target Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, from May to July 2017. It was my first independently-curated exhibition.

Featured artists:
Jill Burks
Eric Corriel
Sasha de Koninck
Alex Gomez
Ed Grant
Maxim Leyzerovich
Tracy Miller-Robbins
John Mosher
Zach Nagle
Lyric Prince
Kaylah Waite

Above image: Genevieve Erin O’Brien, More Than Love on the Horizon (2016)

CTRL+ALT is the result of a bold belief that we claim our destinies. The artists and scholars featured here insist that knowing what the future holds is not a question of speculation, but instead agency. Whether their concepts of the future are based on outer space or inner space, a distant era or the next brief moment, the tellers of these stories commonly claim them as their own. Representing a range of backgrounds and identities, they show that even those who have long been pushed to the margins are the center of someone’s universe. Is the future something that happens to you, or something you actively create? CTRL+ALT is a mere glimpse into a realm of infinite possibilities.

CTRL+ALT was produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (curated by Kālewa Correa, Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis & Adriel Luis) and took place at the former site of Pearl River Mart in SOHO, New York City in November 2016.

Photos by Les Talusan and Manny Mones

Featuring
Adam Labuen
adrienne maree brown
Andrew Rebatta
Alexandra Chang
Betsy Huang
Bryan Thao Worra
Chad Shomura
Charles Jean-Pierre
Chinatown Art Brigade
Che Jen
Chris Mah
Christian A. Mendoza
Christine Sun Kim
Daniel del Pielago
DJ Rekha
Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez
Evan Keeling
Genevieve Erin O’Brien
Jaret Vadera
John “Prime” Hina
Keanu Sai
Keith Chow
Lisa Park
MariNaomi
Matt Huynh
Ming Fay
Museum of Impact
Naiʻa Lewis
Nia Keturah
No Kings Collective
Paul D. Miller
Samson Young
Saya Woolfalk
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay
Sheldon Scott
Secret Identities
Solomon Enos
Taeyoon Choi
Thomas Mader
Wiena Lin
Yumi Sakugawa

Photos by Les Talusan

VISIT SITE

Paula Herrera, Fuego en el aire (2013)

Buenos Caos is a celebration of some superb artists’ film and video, collected together from across the globe, including artists’ work from Argentina, USA, China, Hong Kong and the UK. Combined with some expert DJ-ing provided by ATOM bar, Buenos Caos provides a unique moment to enjoy culture and have a drink or two following Chaos at the Museum in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Caos was curated by Karen Antorveza, Moritz Cheung, Jamie Wyld, and Adriel Luis, and presented at ATOM in Buenos Aires in November 2016.

Featuring
Fuego en el aire – Paula Herrera 5’14” (2013)
Locoemotive Lounge – Robert Fox 6’06” (2014)
King Fu Zombies VS Shaman Warrior 11’42” (2016)
A Corruption of Mass – Megan Broadmeadow 2’42” (2015)
Airy Me – Yoko Kuno 5’38” (2013)
also
Under the Lion Crotch – Wong Ping 4’45” (2011)
200 Nanowebbers – Semiconductor  2’40” (2005)
Memory Theatre – Tom Lock 4’44” (2012
Chew Chew – Tom Goddard 2’55” (2015)
Private Theatre – Liberty Antonia Sadler 3’56” (2015)
A Rat Biting Another Rat – Anita Delaney 4’16” (2015)
Offset – Shi Zheng 7’52” (2014)
Splashy Phasings – Heather Phillipson 2’39 (2013)
The Dark, Krystle – Michael Robinson 9’30” (2013)
Fireworks – Li Ming 5’07” (2008)
Cualidad de animales y pájaros – Violeta Gonzales 5’32” (2015)
Destruccion – Guadalupe Moreno Campos 1’46” (2015)
//blahjj´ – Tatiana Cuoco 8’24” (2016)

Above image: Tracy Keza & Studio Revolt, Hijabs and Hoodies (2016)

CrossLines imagines a new museum for the 21st Century, where contemporary artists and scholars actively explore intersections in today’s web of American identity. These stories reflect our distinct history of migration, wars, civil rights struggles and personal journeys. They layer concepts such as race, religion, gender and sexuality to show the complexity of the American experience today.

CrossLines was produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (curated by Kālewa Correa, Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis & Adriel Luis) and took place over Memorial Day Weekend 2016, at the Smithsonian Arts & Industries Building – the former site of the U.S. National Museum.

Photos by Les Talusan

Featuring
Anida Yoeu Ali / Studio Revolt
Roger Shimomura & SUPERWAXX
No Kings Collective
Monica Ramos
Desirée Venn Frederic w/ Tony Walker
CHELOVE + MasPaz
Tracy Keza / Studio Revolt
Matty Huynh
also
Anjal Chande & Nico Slate
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew
Antoinette Brock
Avi Gupta
Brandon Som
Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles
Clement Hanami
Frank Chi
Gregg Deal
Jason Lujan
Jennifer Cendaña Armas
Makers Lab w/ Ayes Cold, Kerim the DJ, Asha “BOOMCLAK” Santee, S P A C E Lab & Patience Sings
Adrianne Russell & Aleia Brown
National Museum of American
History & Hirshhorn ArtLab+
The Nerds of Color
PJ Gubatina Policarpio & Ida Noelle Calumpang
The People’s Kitchen Collective w/ Sita Bhaumik, Jocelyn Jackson & Saqib Keval
Quota with Dawne Langford &
Alejandro Pintado
Rano Singh
Robert Karimi & ThePeoplesCook Project
Shizu Saldamando
Sons & Brothers
Soul & Ink
Steve Alfaro
Tarfia Faizullah & Jamaal May
Vaimoana Niumeitolu
Kyle Goen
Louis Cabrera
Jason Guzman
Kunal Sharma
Gabriella Callender
Lorena Ambrosio
Mahina Movement
Wooden Wave
Yumi Sakugawa
Zohra Saed & Kai Krienke

Photos by Les Talusan

VISIT SITE

Above photo by astrobuddha

On May 10, 2014 more than 500 people captured over 2,000 photos and videos throughout the course of a single day. The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center issued a call to populate the online world with Asian Pacific American representations of life. Works were submitted from everywhere – throughout the United States and from around the world. This exhibit features a small selection of the work and remains an experiment in envisioning the Asian Pacific American experience as a vast and complex identity, with a history that grows richer and more complicated with each new day.

A Day in the Life of Asian Pacific America was produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, curated by Eddie Wong and Adriel Luis, and juried by Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis, Masum Momaya, Melissa Bisgani & Amber McClure. It debuted online on July 4, 2014.

VIEW EXHIBITION

Above image: Monica Ramos, Carne (2013)

Art Intersections opens conversations about the place of art and the visual stories we can tell together. Whether through coalition or conflict, solidarity or strife, our communities are shaped by the ways we interpret and negotiate our histories in intersection with each other. Here, over twenty celebrated artists explore how their identities, issues and interests – while often deeply personal – exist as an intersection of multiple frames of meaning and reference, often serving as provocative calls for social change or recognizing that change has arrived.

Art Intersections was produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Smithsonian Latino Center, and curated by Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis, Eric Nakamura, Shizu Saldamando, and Adriel Luis. It debuted in July 2013 at Veteran’s Plaza in Silver Spring, MD.

Featuring
Monica Ramos
Sadie Barnett
Pablo Cristi
Steve Alfaro
Mia Nakano
Favianna Rodriguez
Lola Alcaraz
Studio Revolt
Gary Garay
Fidencio Martinez
Culture Strike
Audrey Chan
Arnoldo Vargas
Anna Serrano
Clement Hanami
Albert Reyes
Ako Castuera

VIEW EXHIBITION

OneBeat brings musicians from around the world to the U.S. for one month each fall to collaboratively write, produce, and perform original music, and develop strategies for arts-based social engagement. OneBeat begins with an opening residency, when Fellows collaborate to create original material, record new musical ideas, and incubate their projects. OneBeat fellows then go on tour, performing for a wide array of American audiences, collaborating with local musicians, and leading workshops with youth. During the month, each OneBeat musician also sets out their plans for the future, developing projects in their home countries linked to a mutually-reinforcing network of music-driven social enterprises.

OneBeat is a musical journey like no other. It is a chance for adventurous musicians from an incredible diversity of traditions to seek common ground, create new musical combinations, push the boundaries of music technology, and find ways to involve all members of society in the process of musical creativity. OneBeat endeavors to be the nexus of a new way of thinking about how music can help us collectively build healthy communities, prosperous societies, and a more peaceful world.  An initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in collaboration with the groundbreaking New York-based music organization Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, OneBeat employs collaborative original music as a potent new form of cultural diplomacy.

As a part of OneBeat’s pilot crew in 2012, I curated social media and the Washington, D.C. concert lineups at Busboys & Poets and Atlas Center for the Performing Arts.

Photos by Hannah Devereux

VISIT SITE

Recent events have pushed people to see the brink. Sometimes, we see what is beyond that brink which has ranged from glory to devastation. Nuclear threat might be one of the least comprehensible threats on the global stage. What does it mean? What happens? Could it happen? How is it possible? And then what? Do we stop?

Fields of Fungus and Sunflowers is a book that unfolds by investigating various ways in which world affairs and acts of nature intertwine through a nuclear lens. Featuring an essay and poem by Bombshelltoe’s Lovely Umayam and Adriel Luis, respectively, and edited and printed by artist Tammy Nguyen, the book draws connections between the 2016 Winter Olympics, U.S. diplomacy with North Korea, and lifeforms that thrive by consuming radiation. This publication was the Winter 2017 issue of Martha’s Quarterly published by Passenger Pigeon Press.

BUY @ PASSENGERPIGEONPRESS.COM

Customs Declarations is a collection of songs and visual media created by remixing found sounds and sights I captured during time spent in different parts of Asia. Originally commissioned as a complement to the 2014 performance of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble at the John F. Kennedy Center, Customs Declarations is my attempt to actively resist the orientalist aesthetics that typically encompass Western-derived sonic and visual representations of the region, while coming to terms with the awkward and inevitable foreignness I embody and project as an Asian American in Asia. This project  expands with my growing relationship with Asia, and moments captured include my short-lived residence in Beijing, my first curatorial exchange which toured me throughout Japan, my eyewitness account of the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, my first international art fair in Singapore, and my introductions to Vietnam and Cambodia.

Customs Declaration was commissioned by Washington Performing Arts and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and debuted as a part of Slick Road, a double-feature with DJ Lightbolt at the Kennedy Center in March 2015. Since then, excerpts have been performed at the University of Maryland, NYU, Atom in Buenos Aires, and Yale University.

iB4the1 is a dream come true. It is as much of an exploration of music and myth as it is a journey of the friendships I share within my band iLL-Literacy. This project was born of our late-2000’s discoveries of funk, surrealism, and open technology.

iB4the1.1 was released in 2009, and since then the story has unfolded through releases of music, short films, and live performances.

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

Although Ai Weiwei is known as the dissident artist with a journeyed relationship with China, less is spoken of his life as a New Yorker or the city’s role in the shaping of his creativity and activism. In celebration of its epic exhibition, Ai Wewei: According to What? the Brooklyn museum commissioned a collective of five Chinese American artists to retrace his steps. The result was a collage of Ai’s journal entries, photographs, and influences that paints a portrait of a cultural icon at the precipice of changing the face of arts activism.

Ai Weiwei: The Seed was commissioned and produced by the Brooklyn Museum in July 2014. Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai led the production along with fellow poet Kit Yan, dancer Jessica Chen, musician Jason Kao Hwang, and Adriel Luis as sound artist.

Fusing live hip-hop and electronic music with fantastical costumes and brain-melting imagery, USBUiLLD is something like Sesame Street for disenchanted liberal arts students. On its campaign to conjure the spirit of shared musical experience, iLL-Literacy has brought USBUiLLD to the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts, SXSW, and universities throughout the United States.

USBUiLLD was conceived by iLL-Literacy and directed by Kamilah Forbes in 2010.

BeastReality reaches far into the realms of fantasy to question the truth about modern concepts of love. Merging live music, spoken word poetry, installation art, and film, the piece is a collection of stories that each revolve around the protagonist’s romantic encounters with mythical and science fiction creatures. From mermaids to android robots to demigods, each relationship is explored by juxtaposing our primal need for affection with the sociological guidelines for love.

Through the use of modern myth, BeastReality touches on the themes of interracial relationships, sexuality, marriage and religion, and human loneliness ­ – ultimately asking the audience to confront if our contemporary expectations of an “ideal partner” are as fictitious and far-fetched as the creatures presented onstage.

I began working on BeastReality in 2011 as a pet project to teach myself music production and film editing. I debuted excerpts from the production in 2013 at Busboys & Poets and the John F. Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage in Washington, D.C. as a part of the Asian American Performance Poetry Festival.

Pretty Buoyant Society was a musical experiment by Adriel Luis and DJ Phatrick, born out of their 2007 forays into music-making. These tracks represent Phatrick’s first productions, and my first stabs at songwriting and vocal recording. An exercise in not taking ourselves too seriously, PBS is a timestamp for us at the starting line of our lives of musical creation

How To Make Juice is a collection of my earliest poems as a budding artist. Like you would expect from a poet coming into adulthood, it captures the curiosity, angst, and assumed knowledgeability of someone who thought he had found his voice, when really he was just beginning the search. This book features some of the poems that I performed regularly, as well as journal entries and experiments with word visualizations.

This book is out of print but can be downloaded as a PDF below. Enjoy!

READ THE BOOK

Slip of the Tongue (2004) is a short film directed by Karen Lum and produced by the Bay Area Video Coalition and Adobe Youth Voices. The film takes its soundtrack from Adriel Luis’ performance of a poem of the same name at age 19 at the 2003 Bay Area Teen Poetry Championships. Written after his first encounters with feminist theory, the poem is about a fictitious encounter between a young man and a woman who is quick to expose his flirtations as byproducts of historic patriarchy. At age 15, Lum adapted the poem’s lines into a collage of film clips that confronted her own struggles with beauty standards at the time. The result is a piece that was screened at over 75 film festivals, has become a part of ethnic and gender studies curricula worldwide, and garnered acclaim including a Golden Gate Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival, Jury Award from Media That Matters, and a Regional Emmy for Best Youth Segment (Directing).

Adriel’s post-#MeToo comment: Slip of the Tongue is not only one of my earliest works of art, it’s one of my first experiences with the immortality of online presence. I’m proud of this poem for what it represents in my journey as an artist and a person, and at the same time and glad that over 15 years later, I and the rest of society have evolved to discuss men’s roles in women’s rights with more nuance than the poem. I feel that it’s necessary for me to point this out, because while I spent the first few years after this film’s release cringing over how fast I was slurring my words, more recently I have found myself wishing I was also more polished, politically as well. Every once in awhile this piece will resurface and be debated in popular conversation, and I consider it a blessing and a curse (mostly a blessing) that it continues to be what I’m best known for in some circles.

Slip of the Tongue by Adriel Luis

My glares burn through her.
And I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the essence of her beauty is, well, the essence of beauty.

And in the presence of this higher being,
the weakness of my masculinity kicks in,
causing me to personify my wannabe big-baller, shot-caller,
God’s gift to the female species with shiny suit wrapping rapping like,
“Yo, what’s crackin shorty how you livin’ what’s your sign what’s your size I dig your style, yo.”

Now, this girl was no fool.
She gives me a dirty look with the quickness like,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
so I’m looking at myself,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
But looking upon her I am kinda feelin’ her style.

So I try again.
But, instead of addressing her properly,
I blurt out one of my fake-ass playalistic lines like,
“Gurl, you must be a traffic ticket cuz you got fine written all over you.”
Now, she’s trying to leave and I’m trying to keep her here.
So at a final attempt, I utter,
“Gurl, what is your ethnic makeup?”

At this point, her glare was scorching through me,
and somehow she manages to make her brown eyes
resemble some kinda brown fire or something,
but there’s no snap or head movement,
no palm to face, click of tongue, middle finger,
roll of eyes, twist of lips, or girl power chant.
She just glares through me with these burning eyes
and her gaze grabs you by the throat.

She says, “Ethnic makeup?”
She says, “First of all, makeup’s just an Anglicized, colonized, commodified utility
that my sisters have been programmed to consume,
forcing them to cover up their natural state
in order to imitate what another sister looks like in her natural state
because people keep telling her
that the other sister’s natural state is more beautiful
than the first sister’s natural state.
At the same time,
the other sister isn’t even in her natural state,
because she’s trying to imitate yet another sister,
so in actuality, the natural state that the first sister’s trying to imitate
wasn’t even natural in the first place.”

Now I’m thinking, “Damn, this girl’s kicking knowledge!”
But, meanwhile, she keeps spitting on it like,
“Fine. I’ll tell you bout my ‘ethnic makeup.’
I wear foundation,
not that powdery stuff,
I wear the foundation laid by my indigenous people.
It’s that foundation that makes it so that past being globalized,
I can still vocalize with confidence that I know where my roots are.
I wear this foundation not upon my face, but within my soul,
and I take this from my ancestors
because I’ll be damned if I’d ever let an American or European corporation
tell me what my foundation
should look like.”

I wear lipstick,
for my lips stick to the ears of men,
so they can experience in surround sound my screams of agony
with each lash of rulers, measuring tape, and scales,
as if my waistline and weight are inversely proportional to my value as a human being.
See my lips, they stick, but not together.
Rather, they flail open with flames to burn down this culture that once kept them shut.
Now, I mess with eye shadow,
but my eyes shadow over this time where you’ve gone at ends to keep me blind.
But you can’t cover my eyes, look into them.
My eyes foreshadow change.
My eyes foreshadow light.
and I’m not into hair dyeing.
but I’m here, dying, because this oppression won’t get out of my hair.
I have these highlights.
They are highlights of my past atrocities,
they form this oppression I can’t wash off.
It tangles around my mind and twists and braids me in layers,
this oppression manifests,
it’s stressing me so that even though I don’t color my hair,
in a couple of years it’ll look like I dyed it gray.
So what’s my ethnic makeup?
I don’t have any.
Because your ethnicity isn’t something you can just make up.
And as for that shit my sisters paint on their faces, that’s not makeup, it’s make-believe.”

I can’t seem to look up at her.
and I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the expression on her face
shows that she knows that my mind is in a trance.

As her footsteps fade, my ego is left in crutches.
And rejection never sounded so sweet.