Co-Prosperity is thrilled to present Men I Have Ever Met, a group exhibition anchored on 100+ written encounters revisiting Sungjae Lee's queer journey navigating interpersonal relationships. Lee invited 5 queer Asian artists, Club Chow, Eugene I-Peng Tang, Jay Carlon, Jinu Hong, and Vincent Chong who are based in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York to present creative responses to Lee’s stories. Please join the opening reception on Friday, March 8th from 7:00 to 9:00 PM (Live drawing by Vincent Chong from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM and music by Club Chow from 8:00 PM to 8:45 PM).
Click here to view a map of the exhibition.
What started as a solo exhibition for Sungjae (SJ) Lee turned into a collaborative fruition between himself and five other queer Asian artists. Lee’s Men I have Ever Met, is an ongoing project that describes his queer journey of navigating interpersonal relationships. These range from dating to one night stands since 2008, which have been documented here in written, redacted responses. This documentation begins in 2008 when Lee came out publicly in Seoul, until present day in Chicago. Aside from written responses, Lee has used performance, and installation as a means of activating the many encounters. In the past, he used ASMR (Autonomous Sensorial Meridian Response) podcast readings as a way to explore how audience members can digest his work outside of just reading through the texts.
By using redactions in his work, Lee is keeping certain elements of his life confidential. As he is restricting himself, simultaneously, he is making space for the artists involved to fill in the holes. The five artists being extended an invitation to do so are Vincent Chong, Eugene I-Peng Tang, Jay Carlon, Jinu Hong, and Club Chow. By randomly selecting episodes, which is what Lee calls individual encounters, the artists are asked to translate the episodes into their own mediums. Chong paints queer and trans chosen family but also mixes this medium with traditional art, which includes calligraphy and performance. Tang uses photography much like Lee to capture intimate encounters. Carlon uses performance and sculpture to explore ideas of decolonization, resistance and pleasure embedded within his queer and Filipinx experience. Hong uses his graphic design background to challenge standard guidelines of printing. Club Chow uses music and mixing skills which will be used during the opening to activate words from the episodes.
Though all the artists share similar identities, each one will expand on their lived experience, and overall shine a light on what futures can be dreamt up by bringing these individual and collective narratives to the foreground.
- Cristobal Alday, 2024
Lumpen Radio Special Series:
Men I Have Ever Met with host Sungjae Lee & Club Chow
Airs Fridays, 11PM - Midnight
The radio show Men I Have Ever Met is a program in relation to the group exhibition with the same title at Co-Prosperity, presenting 6 queer Asian artists: Sungjae Lee, Club Chow, Eugene I-Peng Tang, Jay Carlon, Jinu Hong, and Vincent Chong. Responding to Lee’s redacted text installation, DJ Club Chow creates music employing words or sentences from the text as musical elements. Tune in to listen to the full context of the text in an ASMR style and queer Asian themed music! Every Friday, from March 15 to April 12, 11pm – 12am. An hour-long episode is composed of 4 or 5 stories and music in between.
About the Artists
Sungjae (SJ) Lee (이승재, he/they) is a Seoul-born, Chicago-based artist, educator, and writer who makes performance, installation, text, sound, and video. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from Seoul National University in 2014, during which time he discovered his deep interest in performance, writing, and other time-based mediums to represent the voices of marginalized groups. To further develop his practice as a performance artist, he pursued his M.F.A. in Performance Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated in 2019. While residing in the US, his practice has centered on the need for visibility and representation of queer Asians in a Western context. His work has been presented globally in South Korea, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, and the US. He has had residencies at ACRE, High Concept Labs, HATCH Projects, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Arts, and Yaddo. He was selected for the 2022-2023 Kala Art Institute Fellowship, Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art 2021-22, and the 2020 AHL Foundation Artist Fellowship. In 2021-23, he has given readings of his manuscript Men I Have Ever Met in the Chicago-based READINGS series organized by Maud Lavin at different venues like the Poetry Foundation and Watershed.
Club (Kevin) Chow (周克文, he/they) is a Taiwanese-American DJ and promoter currently based in Chicago. An omnivorous selector, he blends music across genres and eras with a common undercurrent of euphoric energy and playfulness. Sonic influences include house, UKG, club music, and breakbeat. He holds a DJ residency at Steamworks Baths, organizes the queer day party Forbidden Fruitz, and soundtracks community-focused LGBTQ events in the city such as Dim Sum & Drag, a drag brunch showcasing queer AAPI performers. Club Chow's taste and versatility have brought him behind the decks at notable Chicago nightclubs such as SmartBar and Podlasie Club, as well as around the US - playing parties in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Atlanta, and throughout the Midwest.
Jinu Hong (홍진우, he/him) is a graphic designer and art director based in New York. He currently works as a member of art team at Alexander Wang and previously worked at Verizon and OnePlus as a branding creative. He also maintains an independent practice on the side with architects, artists, curators, and brands, primarily on prints, branding, websites, and exhibitions. He graduated from Yale School of Art with an MFA in Graphic Design in 2020. He has taught a class at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute and served as a guest critic and lecturer at Yale School of Architecture, Columbia GSAPP, Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Boston University, and Northeastern University.
Jay Carlon (he/they) is a performance artist, choreographer and community organizer whose work is grounded in a collective journey toward decolonization and sustainability. His work facilitates shared healing and the exploration of post-colonial identity, ancestry, and the complex queer and Filipinx experience in relationship to site and space. The youngest of 12 in a Filipino Catholic migrant family, Carlon connects a global network of Filipinx creatives, organizing community around art and food. Carlon’s continued work with these collectives spans opera, dance, and installation. Named Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch, Jay has performed and choreographed for the Metropolitan Opera, 2014 Olympics, 2019 Superbowl, Kanye West, Solange Knowles, and Mndsgn. He received the 2023 National Dance Project Award from the New England Foundation of the Arts to develop and tour his forthcoming work WAKE, a queer postcolonial ritual and meditation on grief (premiere 2024, touring through 2027).
Eugene I-Peng Tang (湯翊芃, he/him) is a Taiwanese artist based in Chicago. Using a conceptually-based photography practice, he explores intimate encounters and unconventional relationships that meld personal life experiences with those of his subjects. His work, A Fly on the Wall, a Deer in the Headlights, which addresses his youthful Asian gay body in relation to other stereotypes of race/age/class, has been shown at multiple galleries and screenings, including the Gene Siskel Film Center, The Plan, Ohklahomo, TNL, and SAIC Galleries. He works in photography, video/sound installation, and sculpture with an emphasis on provocative methodology. With a background in anthropology and filmmaking, he draws influences from relational aesthetics, queer studies, and his own desires. Tang has been awarded the Daniel Berger & Barbara DeGenevieve Graduate Merit Scholarship for Graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an Ox-Bow Scholarship, and the Jim Zanzi Scholarship to complete his MFA degree in 2023. He received the Student Leadership Award, and recently has been awarded a Berlin Institut Für Alles Mögliche Residency. He co-authored a book, ‘Grandma's Girlfriends - the Splendid Youth of Elder Lesbians’(阿媽的女朋友：彩虹熟女的多彩青春), which won 'Best Daily Book of the Year' of 'Openbook Award Taiwan (Openbook好書獎．年度生活書), in 2020.
Vincent Chong (莊志明, they/them) is a queer mixed-race Chinese-American artist working in Chinese calligraphy, seal carving, painting, drawing, and performance. They paint portraits of members of their QTAPI and QTBIPOC community and create performances combining high camp drag/gogo/gymnastics aesthetics with live large-scale calligraphy demonstration. They have shown work at Armature Projects, Lehman College, La MaMa, SoMad, Skånes Konstförening, Center for Book arts, Bodeguita 718, The Museum of Chinese in America, Site Brooklyn, and PAAM. They have performed at Columbus Park, Center for Performance Research, QNA, Inter Arts Center, Skånes Konstförening, MoMA PS1, Abrons Art Center, Movement Research, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Center for Book Arts. Residencies include ISCP, Gallim, the WOW Project Storefront Residency, Center for Book Arts Book Artist Residency, and Fire Island Artist Residency. Awards include NYFA/NYSCA fellowship, City Artist Corp Grant, and Huayu Enrichment Scholarship.