there are things about you that
i cannot remember for you, so

Objects are vessels of memories.

Memory is situated in the order of time. It signifies a moment in your sequence, intersecting the sequence of history.

When we see, touch, smell, feel, or taste something, through the friction of senses, memories come to us.

By lingering with objects, we linger with memories.

Memories are personal.

floor 2. exhibition

sue shu - Sometimes I think about how we constellated, that time you sat so close to me that every time you exhale you’d practically dissipate into me, your smell swirled downs my neck and burnt ashes lingered on my sweater for a couple seconds longer, and I remembered, body is blade…body is paper.
Chế - Her pieces are a continuum of a meditation on personal affairs, utilizing objects to express music in relation to memory association, while also recalling her father’s career as a prominent music producer in their diaspora. Her placements offer a vague sense of grasping the intangible experience of life through the audial process.
Chế is a German born, Vietnamese-American interdisciplinary visual artist and cultural worker based in Los Angeles.​ She fluidly blends various mediums to embrace the complexity of immigrant experience through calligraphy, sculpture, installation, and multimedia. Influenced by her family’s refugee background, her experimental body of work is a reservoir of dedicated research exploring themes of constructed identity, material sustainability, and collective healing.
sue shu (she/her) was born in Shanghai, China. In 2023, shu starts to immigrate to America, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. shu is a process based artist who makes multi-medium sculptures. She received her BFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2022 and is currently an MFA candidate at University of Southern California (USC). Received the Macomber Travel Award in 2024, shu chose to research and learn techniques of ramie fabric in Jingdezhen, China. shu had her first solo show When the Monster Speaks (2024) at Attom Gallery in Los Angeles. Her risographic zine was collected by Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA).
floor 3. memory being: a cocktail experience

Memory is personal. The mist from twisting an orange peel to me is a sunny afternoon on my grandpa’s couch; to you, something completely different. The selection of objects you encounter in your life, along with the way in which they evoke memories, forms your unique way of being.

Assembling a drink through a selection of objects, you are constructing a new “being.” Meanwhile, your selection of objects will bring back old memories as well as encoding new memories with the creation of this drink associated with the name, smell, taste and look.
floor 4. double-exposure: cyanotype memories

As you get to the top floor, you are invited to build an even stronger connection between memory and object to be more grounded and in-tuned with your past and future. Cyanotype is a slow-reacting printing process that creates images reacting to the shadow of objects and angle of light. After the development, it records the specific image encoding the specific location and time of the day. The print remains light sensitive.

The cyanotype you created is something you will keep from this event–a new piece of memory that can fade as time passes, but will remind you of this day every time you see or touch it.

images credit to: Jiayi Hou, Yumu Huo, Efran Tash, Kristen Xu