Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art: Closing Reception & Mother Artist Salon
3 – 5:30PM
Please join on July 26, 2025, from 3 – 5:30 pm (doors open 3 pm, program starts 3:30 pm) for the Closing Reception for the exhibition Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art. At the reception, mother artists Sita Chay (violin) and Rema Hasuma (keyboards) will perform and join a conversation with the exhibition artists on the exhibition’s themes. Admission is free, and no RSVP is required. Families with children are welcome!
Following the conversation, Vietnamese mother artist and author / peacemaker / philanthropist L Le Ly Hayslip will share her thoughts and weave them into a larger conversation about the lessons not learned from the American War in Vietnam — this year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the war as well as the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII — and the need to envision a society where the value of inspiration, creation, mutual care, and unconditional love is recognized and integrated into every aspect of life, without discrimination.
The event is the last of a series of Mother Artist Salons being held in conjunction with the exhibition Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
SITA CHAY (S. Korea) is a violinist, composer, and performance artist who won a 2017 Latin Grammy Award for Best Mariachi Album, as violinist of the Flor de Toloache. She is an awardee of New York Foundation for the Arts Women’s Fund, NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Creative Engagement Grant, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and was invited for residencies at the Stone, Joe’s Pub, and the Cell Theatre for various projects she is envisioning. Her collaborators include Satoshi Takeishi, Shoko Nagai, Sidra Bell, and Leo Genovese and with them she performed in numerous festivals such as Progressive Chamber Music Festival 2023, Outfest 2024, and Multicultural Music Festival 2024.
Her most recent project, “Multidimensionally Human,” is an interdisciplinary series that she collaborates on with Dr. Nikolai Chapochnikov, a neuroscientist and psychotherapist. Through this project, she weaves the psychotherapy modality Internal Family Systems using narrative, dance, visual art, and music as a performance artist.
In 2023, she released a music narrative film “Ritual of Le Sac” which tells a story of a fish-like life of a baby swimming inside the womb. This project was inspired by her recent journey of becoming a mom and experiencing the kindness and gentle curiosity from various strangers on the street for carrying a life inside. She intended this film to reflect and rediscover the innate human capacity and desire to care and honor life.
Ms. Chay is the director and a founder of the Korean Shaman Music Ritual, SaaWee, which international critics have called as a “delicate powerhouse.” For SaaWee, she has interwoven her theatrical experiences from Broadway shows, folkloric spirituality from Korean shaman rituals, and contemporary music flair from New York jazz scenes. SaaWee’s Return of Songbirds debuted at Lincoln Center as part of #Restartstage project in 2021 and was invited to Ars Electronica Festival 2021. SaaWee won the California Music Video Awards 2022 in Best World Music category.
REMA HASUMI (Japan) is a New York-based sound designer and improviser, whose eclectic background spans classical, jazz, and experimental music. The foundation of her music is grounded in a wide range of pianistic expressions that are at times contemplative and at others assertive. Her recent work involves compositions and improvisations with analog synthesizers, electronics, and vocals. Hasumi’s music has been described as one that “is able to capture those elusive moments when silence becomes music and music becomes silence” (Jakob Baekgaard, All About Jazz) and that “begins with a delicate piano rumination, wandering, searching, finding a state of gentle deliberation that suddenly fades” (Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz). Her musical influences span across various musicians, including Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Masabumi Kikuchi, Paul Bley, Terry Riley, Arthur Russel, and many more.
Hasumi’s “Mothers,” a seven-track album dedicated to the collective experience of motherhood, will be released digitally on July 1, 2025. The music represents the journey of mothers striving to protect their creative paths while navigating the deep emotions that come with parenting and the process of redefining their identities. Each track explores a different emotional landscape, yet all share excerpts of piano improvisation from a single recording session, which serves as an undercurrent throughout the album. This undercurrent reflects the ongoing, profound, and dynamic experience of motherhood. The album features a series of collaged soundscapes, consisting of synthesizers, piano, and vocals performed by Hasumi, with contributions from Austin White on electric bass and synthesizers on three tracks. Each track’s sound elements are improvised separately and then combined using a collage approach rather than traditional composition. The final mix is designed to offer a three-dimensional, holistic, and stimulating listening experience. The album will be available for digital download and streaming, with a beautiful cover photograph by Aline Müller. Her works, including the album cover photo, are part of the Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art exhibition. The development of “Mothers” was made possible, in part, by a grant provided by CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing).
LE LY HAYSLIP (Vietnam) is an internationally known Vietnamese-American author, philanthropist, peace activist, and speaker. She grew up in Ky La (now known as Xa Hoa Quy), Vietnam during the American-Vietnam War. She wrote two best-selling memoirs—When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace, based on her painful and ultimately triumphant journey from a traumatizing childhood in war-ravaged Vietnam to her new life in America. Having grown up in Central Vietnam as a woman, Le Ly shares a perspective that is unique when it comes to the Vietnam War. She received raving reviews for both books, including from The New York Times and The Washington Post. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places was included in the 1990 edition of Reader’s Digest’s Today’s Best Nonfiction. Her memoirs, having been published in 17 different languages throughout the world, are now used in several universities as course material to study women in history, the American/Vietnam War, and other topics. In 1993, the books were adapted into the film “Heaven & Earth,” directed by the award-winning director Oliver Stone and starring Hiep Thi Le and Tommy Lee Jones.
Le Ly’s life as a humanitarian began after she arrived in the US in 1970 and became a US citizen, but she returned to her native Vietnam in 1986. Her shock from the devastation, poverty, and illness left by the war became the impetus for her two philanthropic organizations, East Meets West Foundation and Global Village Foundation. Both organizations dedicate their efforts to humanitarian relief, education, and development to help rebuild Vietnam through providing basic needs (shelter, clean water, medical facilities, education), establishing revolving loan programs, and finding homes for several hundred orphaned children. Hayslip continues to lead groups and delegations in cultural and anthropological studies in her home village.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art is an exhibition of five artists who are mothers of different generations — Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Quynh “Alex” Nguyễn (Vietnam), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), and Satomi Shirai (Japan). Curated by CRS co-founder Christopher Pelham, the exhibition will be on view at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York from July 21 – 26, 2025.
“Being an artist is to experience a vigorous, experimental life of the mind and of the senses. Parenthood is another enriching experience: primal, haptic and life-affirming. Why are the two still seen as incompatible?” — Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
This exhibition highlights the inspiring works being created worldwide by mother artists and examines the multifaceted relationship between motherhood and art-making. Through their diverse photography and 2D works, we invite you to consider the challenges that working mother artists face and reflect on motherhood and child-rearing as fundamentally creative acts, inseparably intertwined with art-making, deserving of our loving attention, respect, and support.
EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday, July 21 – July 26, 2025 (closed July 25)
Mon – Thu 12 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 3 pm