Glendale Library, Arts & Culture and ReflectSpace Gallery present (Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings, an exhibition that delves into the multi-generational afterlives of war and displacement and East-West Asian diasporic placemaking through maps, sculptures, photography, archives, video and layered materiality. It features artists from Los Angeles, Korea and China.

Anchored by the work of Los Angeles-based artists Annette Miae Kim and Kyong Boon Oh, (Be)Longing asks people to consider how diasporic histories and spaces are created and narrated. Can borders of belonging be drawn? How can a map be made of a transnational and borderless community? How much do histories of displacement and war enter the contemporary narrative of a community? What is the relationship of a diasporic community to its indigenous lands and history? Kim and Oh have family in South Korea and North Korea, and these fraught familial histories brings a personal and poignant dimension to their work. They query and challenge preconceptions about diasporas and borders through maps, archives, sculpture and tactile materiality.

Four artists from Korea and China – Sun Siran, Xia Yan, Gil Woong Kim and Donah Lee – meditate their diasporic journeys and relationship to homelands with newly commissioned video work. Los Angeles-based contemporary ceramicist Jennifer Cheh reflects on her diasporic present by reaching back into traditional Korean forms.

All seven artists in the exhibition grapple with their diasporic histories and present-day and strive to articulate their own sense of being and belonging.

(Be)Longing is curated by Monica Hye Yeon Jun and Ara & Anahid Oshagan.

(Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings will be on view from July 20 through Sept. 22 at ReflectSpace Gallery, inside Glendale Central Library located at 222 E. Harvard St. in Glendale. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 27 at 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.