Minouk Lim, S.O.S.—Adoptive Dissensus, 2009. Single-channel HD video, 44 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Exhibition on view:
October 1, 2009–December 11, 2009
January 5, 2010—January 30, 2010

Walter and McBean Galleries
800 Chestnut Street campus
Tuesdays–Saturdays, 11:00am–6:00pm
Free and open to the public

The Walter and McBean Galleries will be closed from Saturday, December 12, 2009 to Monday, January 4, 2010.

Phase 1
Walter and McBean Galleries
Opening reception: September 30, 2009, 5:30–7:30pm
On view: October 1, 2009–October 31, 2009
Artists: Shilpa Gupta, Kan Xuan, Minouk Lim, and Jewyo Rhii
Fall 2009 Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series panel discussion:
September 30, 2009, 7:30pm
Kan Xuan and Jewyo Rhii in dialogue with Britta Erickson and Hou Hanru

Phase 2
Walter and McBean Galleries
Opening reception: November 12, 2009, 5:30–7:30pm
On view: November 13, 2009–December 11, 2009
January 5, 2010—January 30, 2010
Artists: Hamra Abbas, Ringo Bunoan, and Chen Hui-chiao
Fall 2009 Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series panel discussion:
November 11, 2009, 7:30pm
Hamra Abbas, Ringo Bunoan, Chen Hui-chiao, and Minouk Lim in dialogue

Phase 3
REDCAT in Los Angeles
Opening reception: November 21, 2009, 6:00–9:00pm
On view: November 22, 2009–January 17, 2010
Artists: Hamra Abbas, Ringo Bunoan, Chen Hui-chiao, Shilpa Gupta, Kan Xuan, Minouk Lim, and Jewyo Rhii


Chen Hui-chiao, Here and Now: Winter, 2009. Double bed, table-tennis balls, and beads. Courtesy of the artist.

Curated by SFAI’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs Hou Hanru, in collaboration with Clara Kim at REDCAT in Los Angeles, Everyday Miracles (Extended) elaborates on Hou’s original project, Everyday Miracles, which he curated for the Chinese Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennial and which featured four Chinese women artists from different generations. Everyday Miracles (Extended) brings together the work of seven women artists—Hamra Abbas, Ringo Bunoan, Chen Hui-chiao, Shilpa Gupta, Kan Xuan, Minouk Lim, and Jewyo Rhii—and creates a dialogue about the cultural diversity and historical difference effected by colonialism and modernization in China, India, Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Using the miraculousness of the everyday to negotiate and transcend political and historical reality, the artists in the exhibition explore such questions as “What kind of social vision for society in the future can be conceived?” and “What kind of globalism and commonalities can be built?”

Recognizing the limitations of classic feminist discourse, the artists implicitly express a desire to structurally and systematically reorient Western European intellectual and artistic traditions. From highly varied and individual perspectives, the artists use their own languages to manifest a universal necessity for alternative visions of modernization and globalization. Key to the success of this project is the recognition of the total context in which these artists are creating, and how they relate to their whole environment of art, architecture, urbanization, and related social issues. The seven artists in the exhibition poignantly reflect upon the vast economic and political changes that have affected every aspect of society and explore the world through a decidedly decentralized perspective—a powerful political position to take in the context of a global art market driven by spectacle and essentialist views.

Hamra Abbas’s work explores ideas of cultural ownership and alienation as well as the creative and destructive energies of love and war. Working in a variety of mediums, including video, installation and sculpture, she mixes the old with the new, the culturally specific with the universal. At SFAI, Abbas presents Love Yourself; at REDCAT, she presents God Grows on Trees.

An active organizer of art events in Manila, Ringo Bunoan spent considerable time in Nepal to seek alternative forms of spirituality. In her installation-based practice, Bunoan weaves this rich experience, encouraging viewers and participants to embrace one another’s life experiences and shared hopes. At SFAI, Bunoan presents Wall, an installation made of used pillows, and, at REDCAT, an installation made of used wood pallets entitled Bridge.

Chen Hui-chiao deals with ritualistic repetitive movements, examining the interrelationship between external realities and inner consciousness, through which she searches for personal meaning and equilibrium. Inspired by poetry, psychology, and the dream state, Chen reinterprets and redefines matter through form, exploring the meaning of relationships, conceptually as well as formally. At SFAI, she will present Here and Now: Winter and, at REDCAT, Sound Falling II.

Shilpa Gupta’s In Our Times, which will be exhibited at SFAI, is a sound sculpture that pairs the speeches of Jinnah and Nehru at the time of the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. At REDCAT, she will present Untitled, large mural-like photographs about collective silence and deprivation. Gupta’s work utilizes interactive video, websites, photographs, objects, sound, and public performances to probe and subversively examine themes of desire, religion, and notions of security on the street and on the imagined border.

Kan Xuan uses everyday objects and her own body to manifest independent visions of personal identity, spirituality, and the social condition of her life. The immediacy of video allows her to question modes of perception and reality through quick-witted, but poignant imagery. A selection of recent video work will be presented at both venues.

Minouk Lim considers some absurd aspects of society by identifying social and political strategies of visual production. In Game of 20 Questions: The Sound of a Monsoon Goblin Crossing a Shallow Stream, Lim documents the annual Multicultural Festival in Seoul to speak about issues of homogenization and difference. In the new work S.O.S.—Adoptive Dissensus, which will be shown at both venues, Lim presents a video work of a performance that takes place on an excursion ship on the Han River, collapsing the past with the present desire for redevelopment that threatens to erase history.

Jewyo Rhii’s art suggests ways of alleviating the weakness of the body and mind. With her subversive and constructive approach, producing tools or places to avoid physical discomfort and providing the audience avenues for participation in the project, Rhii’s humorous pieces often represent the need for comfort and warmth. Rhii will present Ten Years, Please at both SFAI and REDCAT.

The first collaboration between SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries and REDCAT, Everyday Miracles (Extended) concretizes the two institutions’ shared interest in contemporary practices of the Pacific Rim as well as the ongoing dialogue between Hou and Kim. Each of the artists in the exhibition will display unique works over three phases, bridging the two institutions and expanding upon the discrete boundaries of an exhibition.

Born out of a desire for a deeper investigation, Everyday Miracles (Extended) reflects on the dynamic shifts across Asia over the last thirty years. Both the Walter and McBean Galleries and REDCAT have been committed to articulating the historical, cultural, and artistic relationship between the West Coast and the Asia-Pacific region. This exhibition has been conceived as a component both of SFAI’s Pacific Perspectives—one of five discrete but intersecting directions, within SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs, for investigating current constructions of contemporary global culture—and of REDCAT’s ongoing focus on Asian art.

Follow SFAI events and programs on Twitter:



SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs are supported in part by the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. Everyday Miracles (Extended) is presented in collaboration with REDCAT in Los Angeles, where it is made possible with the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Arts Council Korea, the George and MaryLou Boone Fund for Artistic Advancement, and the Taipei Cultural Center in New York City.

Download a PDF (296k) of the press release here.