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Fri, May 30, 2025 5:30pm–7:00pm

Strange You Never Knew: A Conversation about Art, Identity, & Community

Opening Reception of 'Strange You Never Knew' a solo exhibition by Jarod Lew on Friday, January 31, 2025.
Photo by Britt Hueter
Fri, May 30, 2025
5:30pm–7:00pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium

In his exhibition Strange You Never Knew, Chinese American multimedia artist Jarod Lew explores the limits and potential of knowing—knowing who you are, knowing your family history, and knowing your place in a community. His photographs function as a repository of personal and communal histories, surfaces relationships among historic and contemporary acts of racism and violence toward Asian Americans, and examines how identity is shaped by both individual and collective memory. 

As the exhibition comes to a close, join us for a conversation with Jarod and fellow makers, curators, and writers who have inspired his artistic practice: Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, Howie Chen, Simon Wu, and Yechen Zhao. Together, the panel will surface ideas related to self-discovery and community, discuss cross- and inter-generational understanding, and reflect on their paths within this cultural moment.

Free and open to the public, no registration required.

Related Exhibition
Visitors viewing an art exhibition titled 'Strange You Never Knew' by Jarod Lew at a gallery.
Strange You Never Knew
A Solo Exhibition by Jarod Lew
February 1 — June 15, 2025
Taubman I

More About The Speakers

Dr. Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander is the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Co-Director of the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. At the Cantor, Aleesa is the curator of Spirit House (2024), Livien Yin: Thirsty (2024), East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art (2022), and The Faces of Ruth Asawa (2022).

Dr. Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander

Howie Chen is director and curator of 80 Washington Square East gallery at NYU. A founding director of Chen’s, a townhouse gallery in Brooklyn, he has held curatorial roles at the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1. Chen is the editor of Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001 (Primary Information, 2021) and the co-curator of Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969-2001) at 80WSE.

Howie Chen

Jarod Lew is a Chinese American artist and photographer from Metro Detroit. Lew draws on photography to explore intergenerational encounters with diasporic loss. Through this exploration, his work contends with the performativity of race and its instability as a locus of meaning. Lew uses many techniques to confront the complexities and incoherencies of race and racial belonging. Each image explores the tension between history and fantasy as a constructed moment of remembrance.

Jarod Lew

Simon Wu is a curator and writer involved in collaborative art production and research. He has organized exhibitions and programs at the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, MoMA, and David Zwirner, among other venues. In 2021 he was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant and was featured in Cultured magazine's Young Curators series.

Simon Wu

Yechen Zhao is the assistant curator of photography and media at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he specializes in 20th century American photography and East Asian photography during the Cold War and its aftermath. His next exhibition, Pixy Liao: Relationship Material, opens July 2025. His writing has appeared in History of Photography and Aperture. Forthcoming writing includes essays on Soichi Sunami, Reagan Louie, Liu Zheng, and Gwon Doyeon.

Yechen Zhao

SUPPORT

Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer, the UMMA Director’s Acquisition Committee, and the U-M Office of the Provost, Institute for the Humanities, and Ross School of Business. Additional generous support is provided by U-M History of Art, the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, Asian Languages and Cultures, American Culture, and the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program.