Sip from the Skull: Chapter I

Opening Reception: May 19, 2023 6pm–10pm

AGORA is pleased to present Sip from the Skull: Chapter I at Tipsy Shanghai 6, a Chinatown restaurant managed by Owen Yang. Chapter I is a group exhibition featuring works by Billy Chen, Jeewon Kim, Kaming Lee, Sidian Liu, Yiwei Lu, Eiko Nishida, Kai Oh, Tianran Qian, Albert Samreth, Junyi Shi, Qiaosen Yang, V Yeh, and Rachel Youn.

Curated by Dylan Seh-Jin Kim and Samuel S.K. Moussan, Sip from the Skull is an exhibition series organized into “Chapters” that will travel across venues in New York City. The project’s title is inspired by Korean folklore about the 7th-century Buddhist monk Wonhyo. According to folklore, Wonhyo sets out on a journey across Asia to gain Enlightenment. Suddenly caught in a rainstorm, Wonhyo is forced to seek shelter in a nearby cave. During the night, the thirsty Wonhyo reaches around for refreshment, and to his delight, finds a bowl of sweet and fresh water with which he quenches his thirst. To his dismay, he finds in the morning that the bowl of water isn’t how he imagined it. Instead, the bowl was a skull; the water was rotten and spoiled. From this, Wonhyo gains Enlightenment that our perception of ‘reality’ depends on our mind and its desires—it is what the mind presents to us, not how it objectively is. No longer feeling the need to travel, Wonhyo returns home to share his findings.

Sip from the Skull explores different stages of Wonhyo’s journey as a thematic guide. The exhibition series brings together artists who engage with questions about the systems through which we create, assemble, and present objects. By inviting participants to experience the exhibition of works in spaces atypical to art exhibitions, Sip from the Skull centers the social dimension at the forefront, determined by the art, artists, and communities that choose to engage.
Chapter I marks the start of this series at Tipsy Shanghai 6. Owen Yang runs his Mott Street restaurant in an experimental fashion: a “currently chaotic” balance of work, life, and sleep. The ecosystem of hungry customers, local residents, curious tourists, art appreciators, and passersby that flow through his restaurant, located in the heart of Chinatown, will activate the artworks.