to draw a house / 得運廠
Coffee Kang & Evelyn Hang Yin
to draw a house / 得運廠
February 10–March 15, 2024
Opening reception: Saturday, February 10, 4–8pm
Gallery hours: Thursday–Sunday, 12–4pm
LA Artcore is pleased to present to draw a house / 得運廠, a two-person exhibition by Coffee Kang and Evelyn Hang Yin. Working across video, sound, photography, and installation, the two artists engage with the narrative of Chinese diasporas in the U.S. by meditating on the action of drawing a house while exploring the relationships between history and fiction, destiny and agency, socio-political landscapes and personal struggles around migration. The exhibited work traverses archives, artifacts, and sites in the Western United States that once housed Chinese diasporas. All that remains lies in the carvings sealed by layers of paint meant to erase them, on the coaching papers washed away by rushing waves, between the punched holes of pakapoo tickets, under the accumulated incense ashes, and by the stone walls where miners once resided and dreamed.
to draw a house,
one that resembles those on the detention barrack walls
of the Angel Island Immigration Center.
Playing on the dual meaning of “Yùn” as movement and fortune in its Chinese exhibition title, 得運廠 (House of Yùn), to draw a house is also a study of movement within natural and cultural landscapes. Inserting themselves into the remnant of these houses, Kang and Yin fabricate a space that underscores the haunting testimonies of often misplaced histories. Incorporating performance, projection, and artifacts related to the artists’ personal experience, the exhibition questions the authenticity of the official record and the authority of institutional powers, calling for a re-imagined future in resistance to displacement, banishment, and erasure.
to draw a house,
one that ripples in archival silence;
searching and dreaming.
*The exhibition and the accompanying programs are made possible by Mike Kelley Foundation for Arts, California Arts Council, California Humanities, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts.