UMMA To Open First Solo Museum Exhibition by Artist Jarod Lew

Strange You Never Knew, opening February 1, showcases Asian American memory, family, and identity in Southeast Michigan

Ann Arbor, MI—The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) announced today Strange You Never Knew, the first solo museum exhibition by multimedia artist Jarod Lew. Opening February 1, 2025, this powerful exhibition brings forward personal and intergenerational stories of identity, family memory, and diaspora within the Asian American experience.

In Strange You Never Knew, Lew explores the limits and potential of knowing—knowing who you are, knowing your family history, and knowing your place in a community—by weaving together connections between personal history and broader social contexts.

The exhibition features three of Lew’s recent portrait series, each detailing intimate scenes of family and community, and a newly commissioned video installation that surfaces broader social and economic contexts. Each body of work sheds light on aspects of Asian American life in the Midwest, drawing connections between past and present experiences of cultural bias, discrimination, and resilience.

In his series Please Take Off Your Shoes, Lew’s portraits make visible the diverse multi-generational Asian American community in southeast Michigan, while In Between You and Your Shadow offers an intimate look at his relationship with his mother, who, to this day, resists being photographed. The latter invites audiences into a deeply personal part of his family history by sharing his discovery that his mother was once the fiancée of Vincent Chin, whose racially motivated murder in Highland Park, Michigan in 1982 sparked an Asian American civil rights movement. In Mimicry, Lew’s self-portraits are superimposed onto found photographs, directly confronting historical moments of cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping.

Complementing these images is a newly commissioned video installation, The New Challengers Strike Back, which features two videos that create a dialogue between Detroit’s historical economic struggles and cultural conflicts. One monitor features Detroit news footage from the 1980s, and the other monitor presents a bonus level game sequence from Super Street Fighter II, playable by visitors.

“Jarod Lew’s work surfaces the complex history of the Asian American experience in the midwest with deep sensitivity,” said Jennifer M. Friess, exhibition curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Associate Curator of Photography at UMMA. “Strange You Never Knew speaks to intimate family relationships within the context of wider societal forces, offering a poignant reflection on the unseen weight of history.”

Jarod Lew: Strange You Never Knew will be on view at UMMA February 1 through June 15, 2025.