Virtual Artist Talk: What Makes a Home?

This virtual event is free; registration is required. Please email communityarts@artsmia.org to register.

CarryOn Homes artist collective and Mia invite you to a virtual artist talk. Gabriel Ritter, Curator and Head of Contemporary Art at Mia, and Krista Pearson, Manager of Community Arts at Mia, will host the conversation with CarryOn Homes artists, Zoe Cinel, Shun Jie Yong, Peng Wu, Preston Drum and Aki Shibata about their experiences of making a home in the US and the experience of working in a multicultural artist collective as they recently created the art installation “Living Room,” featured in the special exhibition “When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Art and Migration.”

CarryOn Homes is a team of five artists from five countries: Zoe Cinel (Italy), Preston Drum (USA), Aki Shibata (Japan), Peng Wu (China) and Shun Jie Yong (Malaysia). Being an artist group comprised of immigrants and transplants, they have experienced the difficulty of adapting to a new cultural context while attempting to maintain a sense of identity and find a community. Being an immigrant in the USA is a complicated condition that is both humbling and empowering. Drawing on this experience they seek to create artworks that offer a sense of belonging to those who are disenfranchised.

Through their collaborative art projects, they have developed relationships with immigrant communities in the Twin Cities, such as Indigenous Roots, Hope Community, SEAD: Sound East Asian Diaspora, among others. These partnerships have brought to light many questions, most centrally, how can they as artists and immigrants, better serve their communities and how can they foster cross cultural dialogue?

The COH team believes in the power of art to connect people and have channeled this ethos to create projects that open spaces and share resources. While CarryOn Homes’ practice is diverse in mediums, ranging from photography and videography to sculpture and interactive performance, what unites their body of work is the empowerment of the viewer and the participant. Not only do they create visual art objects, situations, and environments, they also organize community events, meals, and workshops.

The CarryOn Homes’ approach to art making is to consider people first and form second. Through this process, the team constructs platforms for interactions in service of the community.