randian | 燃点

Mixed Blood, a solo exhibition of American Korean Visual artist CYJO’s work featuring 19 families with children of mixed ethnicity, is going to be held in Minsheng Art Museum SH on 8^th November 2014. This exhibition is host by Minsheng Art Museum and generously supported by US Embassy in Shanghai.

Raised in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and having spent much of her adult life in NYC, CYJO encapsulates her multicultural community and American upbringing through family portraits and interviews in NYC and Beijing. Her exploration of identity and its relationship to migration and culture, beginning as early as 2004, continues with these compelling photographic portraits. Mixed Blood opens the doors into the living quarters of select families inviting the viewer to engage with their portraits and personal narratives. Mixed Blood investigates the shaping of identity and culture through tradition, modernization, citizenship, and ethnicity.

As Nik Apostolides, Curator of this exhibition, puts it, “The families in Mixed Blood present the unprecedented diversity of human relationship, and the increased blending of races and cultures in the 21^st century. At the same time, the series suggests the evolving role of individuals and  families in defining their own unique identities and shaping their own values in ways that use race and ethnicity as a partial frame, but that also begin…to blur traditional lines and create new categories and connections.”

The exhibition will run through till 8^th December, before which audiences shall be welcomed to attend a lecture by the artist to embark on a deep yet interactive exchange with each other.