On Saturday, May 11th, 2024, from 4-6 pm, the AHL Foundation Inc. will open the 2024 AHL-Chun Family Foundation Curatorial Open Call Exhibition: There Is No Sincerity Without Irony, at the AHL Foundation Gallery located at 2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd, New York, NY 10030 (corner of 139th Street). The opening will feature a performance by Kyoung eun Kang at 4:30 pm. Curated by Joyce Chung, this exhibition explores the female reproductive system and its relevant activities through an intersectional framework of race and feminism. The exhibition will be on view from May 11th -June 8th, 2024.

Participating artists Sara Jimenaz, Kyoung eun Kang, Kakyoung Lee, Jiwon Rhie, Hyeree Ro, Kristina Wong, and Kim Ye, address specific female body parts and corporeal experiences in their exhibited work. Their works reflect how women’s engagement with their bodies shapes and develops their perception of sex and sexual attitudes. This exhibition will pose the following questions: What are the ways Asian women have claimed their sexual choices and demands against exoticization, hypersexualization, and hierarchy? What compromises have been made surrounding the fetishized Asian female body in relation to male heterosexuality? This exhibition strives to facilitate critical contemplation around the shared pasts, present, and possible futures surrounding women’s bodies.

This exhibition features documentation of Thank You for Your Service, 2022, by Kim Ye. Thank You for Your Service utilizes the form of a military funeral to bury the placenta from the artist’s pregnancy. The script for the eulogy appropriates medical journalists’ descriptions of placental growth as a “military invasion”.

The AHL Foundation, Inc., 501(c)(3) not-for-profit arts organization established in 2003, supports artists of Korean heritage working in the United States and promotes exposure of their work in today’s highly competitive contemporary art world. Their mission is to seek, identify, and promote talented Korean and Korean-American artists active in the United States; provide the artists with a platform and resources to further develop their talents; and host educational, cultural, and artistic events to build wider public awareness of contemporary artists of Korean heritage.