Organized by ICA LA guest curator Anna Sew Hoy and Good Works Executive Director Anne Ellegood, Scratching at the Moon is the first focused survey of Asian American artists in a major Los Angeles contemporary art museum. The exhibition celebrates the work of an intergenerational group of thirteen leading artists in the Asian American community whose contributions to culture are multiple, ranging from their distinctive visual arts production to their commitment to pedagogy to their dedication to research, activism, and community engagement. Featured artists include Patty Chang, Young Chung, Vishal Jugdeo, Simon Leung, Michelle Lopez, Yong Soon Min, Na Mira, Amanda Ross-Ho, Miljohn Ruperto, Dean Sameshima, Anna Sew Hoy, Amy Yao, and Bruce Yonemoto.
Scratching at the Moon centers on artistic production in Los Angeles to trace the overlapping activities among dynamic communities of Asian American artists who have contributed significantly to the city’s art world over the past two decades. The initial idea for the exhibition came in the summer of 2020 during a period of immense social upheaval. Still in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic marked by loss, unrest, and uncertainty, the movement in support of Black lives erupted across the country with public protests in the wake of egregious police violence. Simultaneously, Asian Americans faced increased attacks amid false rhetoric about the pandemic. In response, communities came together to uplift one another, strengthen bonds, and survive this singular global emergency. It was at this time that artist Anna Sew Hoy began to imagine an exhibition of Asian American artists with indelible ties to Los Angeles that would make visible the communities and relationships in which she had participated since returning to the city in 2002.
While Los Angeles has long been home to a large and growing Asian American population, the work of artists from diasporic immigrant communities remains underrepresented in art institutions in the city. Scratching at the Moon presents significant works—several created specifically for the exhibition—by artists who were born in the United States or who emigrated here from Korea, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Canada. Encompassing the mediums of video, multi-media installation, sculpture, ceramics, photography, and performance, these artists’ works confront such topics as the formation of identity, gender roles and class struggle, structural and environmental racism, immigration, cultural assimilation, gentrification, family dynamics and intergenerational teachings, and legacies of settler ideologies on academic disciplines.
Contributing to efforts of coalition building, collaboration, and the beautiful entanglements that shape identity, Scratching at the Moon celebrates and historicizes the important work of these artists. Their commitment to community, criticality, and resistance is visible throughout the exhibition, and Scratching at the Moon provides an opportunity to bear witness, together, to the crucial stories they bring to light.
Scratching at the Moon was organized and curated by Anne Ellegood and Anna Sew Hoy. Ellegood has been the Good Works Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), since September 2019. Her previous exhibition, Witch Hunt, co-curated with Connie Butler, was presented at the ICA LA and Hammer Museum in 2021. She was Senior Curator at the Hammer from 2009 – 2019, where she organized numerous exhibitions including Made in L.A. 2018. Ellegood serves on the boards of directors of several arts organizations in Los Angeles, New York and Istanbul. She received her MA in Curatorial Practice from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and was a 2020 Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership.
Anna Sew Hoy was guest curator and exhibitor for Scratching at the Moon. Sew Hoy utilizes sculpture, ceramics, public art and performance to connect with our environment, and to demonstrate the power found in the fleeting and handmade. Sew Hoy’s work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.
She has had numerous solo exhibitions in Los Angles and other California cities. She is Associate Professor and Ceramics Area Head at University of California, Los Angeles.
Principally through FOCA’s Curators Award, ICA produced a 215-page scholarly catalog for Scratching at the Moon containing over 150 color photographs including full page color plates of the installed pieces as well as related work by many of the artists. The catalog includes scholarly essays by not only Ellegood and Sew Hoy but also by John Tain, Kris Kuramitsu and Sarah Wang who are noted curators, educators and historians. Also included are five sets of conversations among the artists and curators. The catalog opens and closes with brief excerpts from a book by Julietta Singh, author and professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia.
