EyeWorld

Drawers accumulate objects. We use them in our homes and offices to store, file, or hide our messy lives. Rummaging through them can yield unexpected discoveries — objects that are markers of ourselves at different times or under different circumstances. While most drawers hold personal memories, the cabinet used in this exhibition had a more public purpose. It was designed to preserve and display archeological specimens in a museum. The individually labeled drawers held artifacts that had been removed from their original sites and organized scientifically. Scholars used them to compile data and form theories. For scientists and the public alike, the contents of these drawers were used to make sense of the world.

When invited to curate an exhibition using this museum case, with its 72 drawers, we set out to explore how creative people from various professions — artists, curators, writers, architects, and others — might represent something as vast and unknowable as the world. Could the world with all its systems and structures, be visualized and made physical in the confines of a single drawer? How have travel, our personal interests, and the media informed how we see the world? What objects, images, symbols, maps, photos or shapes would one choose to represent it?

The contents of each drawer range from the grand to the personal, from the factual to the metaphoric, from visual puns to diagrams, paintings and sculptures. The top of the cabinet, in the glass-enclosed vitrine, contained objects that relate to and accompany each of the drawers —Ambassadors, if you will. These Ambassadors were arranged in the case according to similar object type and/or characteristics to create a dialog of like specimens in keeping with the spirit of the historical museum case.

The exhibition took place between November 22, 2009 to January 17, 2010, at Triple Candie in New York City.

Curators

Emily Cheng
Emily Cheng studied at the New York Studio School and received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in painting. Her solo shows include The Bronx Museum, Plum Blossom Gallery, Winston Wachter Fine Art, Bravin Post Lee Gallery, Lang and O’Hara Gallery, New York at Hanart Gallery in Hong Kong, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and the Ayala Museum in Manila, Philippines, and The Cincinnati Center of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has been in group exhibitions at MASS MoCA, MA; Yerba Buena Contemporary Art Center, San Francisco, CA; National Academy of Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY; the Guangzhou Triennial ’08 at the Guangdong Museum, Contrast Gallery, Shanghai and MOCA, Shanghai, China. In 2010 she had a solo exhibition at Louis Vuitton in Hong Kong, Edward Cella Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and participated in a group show at MOCA, New York. Timezone 8 published the book Emily Cheng, Chasing Clouds, A decade of studies in 2007. Cheng has taught at numerous institutions including Cooper Union, New York University, Rhode Island School of Design, California Institute of the Arts, and for the past 13 years has taught Asian art history at the School of Visual Arts. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts award and Yaddo. This is the second group exhibition Cheng has curated.

Michelle Loh
Born and raised in Shanghai and educated in the United States, Michelle Loh is a New York-based art administrator and information technology expert. She was one of the team that established New York’s first Asian Contemporary Art Fair (ACAF NY) in 2007 and 2008. From 2003 to 2006, Loh was co-publisher of the magazine “Art Asia Pacific.” She was a member of the advisory committee for artist Solange Fabio’s public art project “TRANSITIO_NYC” in 2005, and has produced four TV series featuring Asian American artists in New York. Loh has been working in the investment banking industry for the past decade.