Detail of Ala Ebtekar's Elemental mixed-media installation. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Special programming:

June 26: Artist discussion
Karin Higa, co-curator of One Way or Another and senior
curator of art at the Japanese American National Museum
in Los Angeles, will have an on-stage conversation with
artists Michael Arcega, Jean Shin and Mika Tajima.
Doris Duke Theatre; 7:30pm; free

Visiting artists
For One Way or Another, the Academy has invited artists
Michael Arcega, Geraldine Lau, Jean Shin and Mika Tajima
to Honolulu to install their works, beginning June 10. Shin
is involving the local art community by soliciting sweaters
from Asian-American artists, and working with a group of
local artists and students selected by the Academy to install
her work "Unraveling." The artists' visit is made possible by
a grant from the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation.

Video still from Laurel Nakadate's I Want to Be the One To Walk in the Sun.
Courtesy of Danziger Projects.

One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now was organized by
The Asia Society, New York, with support from Altria Group, Inc., the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, Nimoy Foundation, and Asia Society's Contemporary Art Council.

Major funding for the Honolulu presentation is also provided by Ron and Sanne Higgins and ARTafterDARK. In-kind support is provided by Sony Corporation, Hawaii.

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

New York Times - September 8, 2006
Giant Robot - February 11, 2008
Absolutearts.com - Sept 7, 2006

One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now brings together 17 artists from across the country who challenge and extend the category of Asian-American art.

The title of the exhibition, inspired by the 1970s Blondie hit, suggests that there has never been a formulaic way of making or seeing art, and these artists initiate new conversations that highlight the multidimensional ways of conceptualizing and producing art today.

The artists are all at least part Asian—with cultural roots in China, India, Iran, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, the U.S. and Vietnam—and came of age in the U.S. during the late 1970s and 1980s. Moving away from the identity politics of Asian-American artists a generation earlier, the artists in One Way or Another present work that reveals the freedom to choose, manipulate, and reinvent different kinds of languages and issues, whether formal, conceptual or political. The artists and their work defy a definitive conception of Asian-American art.

The artists: Michael Arcega, Xavier Cha, Patty Chang, Binh Danh, Mari Eastman, Ala Ebtekar, Chitra Ganesh, Glenn Kaino, Geraldine Lau, Jiha Moon, Laurel Nakadate, Kaz Oshiro, Ann Sew Hoy, Jean Shin, Indigo Som, Mika Tajima, Saira Wasim