Gathering - Break Pot: St Johns Place

Amy Lee Sanford performs “Break Pot: St Johns Place” on Saturday, July 15 at 4:30pm. The hour-long performance initiates with Sanford breaking a Cambodian clay pot. She reassembles the pot. The resulting sculpture becomes a part of the “Gathering” exhibition. Audiences are not required to stay seated during the performance. However, the artist and organizers request that sound and movement are kept to a minimum throughout the performance.

“Gathering” highlights the relationships between forty-five Asianish artist members and their works at Tiger Strikes Asteroid–New York (TSA-NY) in Bushwick (Sat, June 24-Sun, July 30, 2023) and FiveMyles in Crown Heights (Sat, July 8-Sun, August 13, 2023), curated by Cecile Chong and Sophia Ma. Sanford’s performance is a concrete gesture of reconstitution and reanimation that mirrors the thematic throughline of the exhibition.

In March 2018, Sara Jimenez, Maia Cruz Palileo, Gabriel de Guzman, and Cecile Chong formed Asianish. The idea of the group came out of their experience after participating in the NYC Creative Salon around the theme “identity.” The group is interested in informally sharing and discussing the nuanced and complex Asian identities and experiences in the US art world. The group holds space for these hybridized “Asian-ish” identities that are unique and specific to each member. The community continues to grow and recognize each other as a resource for growth, strength, and wisdom. As of May 2023, the group has 163 members.

The exhibition is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) and the Asian Women Giving Circle, a donor-advised fund of the Ms. Foundation for Women. Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The co-curators thank the staff of FiveMyles and the artist members of Tiger Strikes Asteroid for their efforts.

Please contact asianishexhibition2023@gmail.com for press inquiries.
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Artist Biography
Amy Lee Sanford is a Cambodian Diaspora queer visual artist whose practice engages personal history to reflect upon the traumas and losses that we all endure, and the lengths we go to manage and heal ourselves. Through her performance process of smashing and repairing Cambodian clay pots, the deliberate actions contemplate sudden change and the quiet, time consuming, and repetitive actions of repair and transformation. Her work embodies the intertwined growth of themes including displacement and embracement, absence, memory and fantasy, the political and the personal, outsider and insider. Born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and raised in the United States, and based in Brooklyn, NY, Amy holds a Visual Arts degree from Brown University, with concentrated study in engineering, chemistry and biology. A partial exhibition list includes Haus der Kunst (Munich), A+ Gallery (Kuala Lumpur), FramerFramed (Amsterdam), SF Cameraworks (San Francisco), InCube Arts (New York), Topaz Arts (New York), Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (NSW, Australia), the Singapore Art Museum and at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Roskilde, Denmark).