Exhibition
Shoes at the Door
Guest curated by Dylan Kaleikaumaka Hill
Friday, May 1-Sunday, May 31
SNF Parkway Theatre and Currency Studio
Parkway Gallery Hours: During Asia North and Parkway events at the Parkway
Currency Studio Gallery Hours: Thursday - Friday 1 - 5 pm; Saturday 12 - 3 pm

Every household is familiar with the pleasures and pains of hospitality. Hours of unseen preparation yield specialty dishes and spotless interiors for strangers and family alike. For many of us who are part of the APIMEDA (Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and Desi American) community, guests are not expected to do anything, but leave their shoes at the door. This simple act–rooted in respect and ritual–demonstrates the way in which hospitality creates space for communal exchange. Shoes at the Door brings together works by seventeen APIMEDA-identifying artists living in the greater Baltimore and DMV region whose artworks consider hospitality as a malleable practice shaped by diaspora, cultural tradition, inheritance, colonial commodification, and celebration.

The works in this exhibition capture the breadth and diversity of hospitality customs and notions of home through installation, ceramics, painting, sculpture, drawing, and textiles, displayed throughout Parkway Theatre and Currency Studio. Some of the featured artists engage explicitly with intergenerational practices associated with welcoming others into our homes, reimagining household objects that evoke familial gatherings and celebratory meals. While such works incite nostalgia and joy, they also excavate the gendered labor and colonial legacies that inform them. Select artists also offer meditations on hospitable conditions within our built and natural environments, gesturing to the complexities of diasporic placemaking.

Shoes at the Door offers a nuanced glimpse of what it means to prioritize the care of others through acts of hospitality, which have the ability to both strengthen our ties to distant homelands and subvert cultural expectation.

P.S. Unlike the title suggests, you will not be asked to take your shoes off at any point.

Featured Artists:

Hannah Atallah, Thea Canlas, Aishwariya Chandrasekar, Rosa Chang, Michelle Chen, Riya Devi-Ashby, Anna Divinagracia, Heejo Kim, Anthony Le, Nadia Nazar, Lynn Nguyen, Katherine Pon-Cooper, AX Qin, Artie Sadahiro, Julie Sayo, Asma Waheed, Amelie Wang