March 5–23, 2025
Opening Reception
Saturday, March 8th, 2025 6–8pm

Curated by Jiyeon Paik

Westbeth Gallery
155 Bank Street
(enter through courtyard)
New York, NY
Hours: Wed–Sun 1–6 PM

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.

Jiyeon Paik is an independent curator whose research concerns contemporary representations of race, gender, and aging with a particular focus on issues of marginalization, and the body in art by women and artists of color. Paik has worked with non-profit art organizations and commercial galleries such as Gallery Hyundai, New York; DOOSAN Gallery New York; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Boston Center for the Arts; Arario Museum in SPACE, Seoul; Art Sonje Center, Seoul, among others. Paik is the founder and director of episode, a gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Her curatorial projects include From This Blanket (Print Center New York, 2024), The Faraway Nearby (A.I.R. Gallery, 2024), Detaching (Parenthesis) (DOOSAN Gallery New York, 2018), Seeing and Being Seen (La MaMa Galleria, 2017), Between the Lines: Korean Contemporary Art Since 1970 (Arario Gallery, 2014), and The Room, Hyungsik Kim: Distortion (Total Museum, 2014).

Kyoung eun Kang is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York, originally from South Korea. Her practice spans performance, video, drawing, photography, installation, text, and sound. Central to her work is the exploration of geographical and cultural identity, alongside universal human themes like affection and connection. Her work contemplates the significance of forging and nurturing human bonds in an ever-evolving world. Kang’s work has been exhibited internationally and across the United States in galleries and museums, including: A.I.R. Gallery; Collar Works; NURTUREart; BRIC Project Room; and the ISCP project space in New York; the Korean Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.; the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in Australia; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea. Kang has received residencies and fellowships at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Smack Mellon, the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, BRIC Media Arts, the NARS Foundation, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the LES Studio Program, ISCP, the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. Kang received both a BFA and MFA in painting from Hong-ik University in Seoul, South Korea, as well as an MFA from Parsons School of Design in New York.

Kazumi Tanaka graduated from Osaka University in 1985 and moved to New York in 1987, studying sculpture at the New York Studio School until 1990. A recipient of a 2017 Tiffany Foundation Grant and a 2023 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. Tanaka is preparing new work for Believers: Artists and Shakers, opening in February 2025 at the ICA Boston, MA. She has participated in notable residencies including: Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1990) and McDowell (2013). Tanaka exhibits at museums and galleries internationally including Fridman Gallery, Beacon, NY (2022, solo); Civetella Ranieri for the Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); Kunming Art Biennale, Yunnan Art Museum, Yunnan, China (2018); Miyauchi Foundation, Hiroshima, Japan (2015); Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA (2011, solo); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2002); the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, MA (1997); the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1996 & 1993 solo); and Kent Gallery, New York, NY (1995, solo).

Jayoung Yoon earned a BFA from Hongik University, Seoul, Korea, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI. She has participated in exhibitions at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, San Jose, CA; Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA; Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY; New Bedford Art Museum, New Bedford, MA, and Here Arts Center, New York, NY among others. Yoon was the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, the BRIC Media Arts Fellowship, and the Franklin Furnace Fund. She has attended residencies at MacDowell, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Millay Arts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and Sculpture Space among others. Her work has been featured in various publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Hyperallergic, Surface Design Journal, and Fiber Art Now. Yoon currently lives and works in Beacon, NY.

sooim lee moved to New York in 1981, where she continues to live and work. She holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Painting from Hong-Ik University in Seoul (1976 and 1978, respectively) and an M.A. in Printmaking from New York University (1984). Her recent projects include the performance “Calling Back, Calling Forward, From This Blanket” at the Print Center, New York, NY (2024), and the solo exhibition sooim lee: Across Time and Place” at Art Projects International, New York (2017). lee has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including “30 Years: Art Projects International” (2023), “Color as Space” (2022), “Paper and Process 3” (2021), “New Works” (2019), “Summer Selections” (2018 and 2014), “Marking 2” (2016), “Curate NYC” at Rush Arts Gallery, NY (2013), “Intersecting Lines” (2012), “911 Arts: A Decade Later” at Commons Gallery, New York University (2011), “Absence” at Queens Museum of Art: Partnership Gallery, NY (2010), and “Irrelevant” at Arario Gallery, NY (2010).

Xinyi Liu works with mulberry paper and disposable wipes, which resonate with the thin and silky quality of human skin. She creates works that metaphorically mimic the processes of treating wounds to heal. Through her “medical” manipulation, they become her “second skin.” Like a doctor, she does surgeries for her work. She received her BA and BFA from Cornell University and her MFA from Columbia University. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University and Syracuse University. The artist’s work has been exhibited at A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY; ChaShaMa, New York, NY; YveYANG Gallery, New York, NY; Visual Arts Center, Nantucket, MA; Salón Acme, Mexico; Lenfest Center for the Arts, New York, NY; Half Gallery, New York, NY; CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; CAA Art Museum, Hangzhou; China Printmaking Museum, Shenzhen; EDA Art Space, Shenzhen; Olive Tjaden Gallery, Ithaca, NY; John Hartell Gallery, Ithaca, NY; Mann Library Gallery, Ithaca, NY; Palazzo Santacroce, Rome; Euroasian Art Gallery, Paris; Jugendkunstschule Pankow, Berlin.

Jamie Ho is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Tallahassee, FL. Her art practice engages with GIFs, photography, new media, and sculpture to investigate the long-term impact of assimilation and cultural bereavement through references to ancestral Chinese traditions and artifacts. Her work troubles the history of public spectacle and display of Chinese American women, using performance and lighting studio to challenge societal expectations of gender roles and performance. She received her MFA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her BFA from the University of New Mexico. Ho’s work has been exhibited nationally at Houston Center for Photography (TX), ChaShaMa (New York, New York), Candela Books + Gallery (Richmond, VA), Arts + Literature Laboratory (Madison, WI), and more. She has been included in the 2023 Silver List, was a 2021 Critical Mass Finalist and was awarded the 40th Center Annual Beth Block Honorarium by Houston Center for Photography. She was awarded residencies at ACRE Residency and Vermont Studio Center. She is an Assistant Professor of Photography + Moving Image at Florida State University.

Junli Song grew up in Chicago, but lived abroad from 2012-2018 in South Korea, England, Italy, and South Africa. Her studies are similarly widespread: she originally majored in economics and international development at the University of Chicago and the University of Oxford, respectively, before returning to the creative path. She completed her MFA at the University of Arkansas with a concentration in printmaking, and is currently the Grant Wood fellow in printmaking and visiting professor at the University of Iowa. As an artist and storyteller, she works across a range of media from printmaking and painting to sculpture and animation to explore imagined worlds and personal mythologies. As a Chinese American woman, she has undertaken the project of world-building as a way to create a space where she belongs, and to make sense of the complex, often contradictory, realities of existing between cultures. Centering around a female re-imagining of the mythological headless deity, Xingtian, as a symbol of resistance, the world created within these images exists as an imaginary realm where the liminal becomes a space of alternative existence. Drawing upon the fantasy and continual self-(re)invention inherent within diasporic societies, her work reveals the fluid nature of identity as inherited stories and traditions continually evolve.

Lipika Bhargava is a multi-media artist working across ceramics, painting,
sculpture, video and performance. She is currently an AICAD fellow at Pratt Institute. She
completed her MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design, New York. Her practice is
process-oriented and performative in mark-making drawing from her background in Dance
(Indian classical and contemporary). Her work oscillates between personal-political and
reality-fiction. In her work, she explores different themes of sexuality, death, love, identity, fear,
and political satire.

Naho Taruishi lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been shown both locally and abroad including at episode gallery, Planthouse Gallery, The Drawing Center in New York, NY as well as shows at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, TX among others. Her publication by Vincent FitzGerald & Co. is held in various institutional collections including the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Harvard University, and Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Taruishi has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. She also has received fellowships from The Drawing Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.