Rooted Shadows
Exhibit Dates
Rooted Shadows will be on view in Goucher College’s Rosenberg Art Gallery in the Kraushaar Center
from November 14, 2024 to January 30, 2025. This exhibit, which is free, open to the
public, and accessible to all, can be viewed Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Artwork Photo
azumi O E, “A”, 2020, digital video, 9:09 min.
Artist Reception
An artist’s reception will be held Thursday, November 21, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the
Rosenberg Art Gallery. Email art.galleries@goucher.edu for more information. A performace will take place November 14 at 6:30-8 p.m.
About the Exhibit
Rooted Shadows is a convergence of six Asian and Asian American artists whose works interrogate the complex interplay between identity, place, and the self. These artists—Riya Devi-Ashby, Lucia Shuyu Li, Bao Nguyen, azumi O E, Setsuhi Shiraishi, and Ni Xin—are not merely performers but explorers of the profound dialogue between personal history and the environment they inhabit. Their medium is performance, their canvas the intricate web of cultural memory and contemporary existence.
What unfolds in this exhibition is not simply the presentation of art but the invocation of a deeper questioning. The artists use performance, collaboration, and multimedia practices to probe the spaces where heritage meets the present, where the self is both rooted and in flux. Maryland, with its nuanced social and physical landscape, becomes more than a backdrop; it is an active force, shaping and being shaped by these works.
The performances range from the evocative movements of Butoh to the meditative strokes of live calligraphy, from the raw immediacy of experimental vocals to the immersive realms of sound installations. Each act, each gesture, each sound is charged with the weight of personal history, while simultaneously refracting that history through the lens of the here and now.
Rooted Shadows compels us to confront the paradoxes inherent in being. It reflects the tension between the rootedness of cultural and familial histories and the shifting, intangible nature of lived experience. These artists, drawing from their ancestral legacies, transform their origins into something that transcends mere memory—something fluid, mutable, shadowed.
The exhibition is an invitation to witness how tradition and the present, personal
identity and communal spaces, continually interact. It is a meditation on the ways
art can embody this tension, casting shadows of the past even as it roots itself in
the unpredictable contours of the present.
About the Artists
Riya Devi-Ashby
Femininity and feminine performance are a double-edged sword, simultaneously beautiful and violent. Through my art, I strive to create meditative and cathartic moments that honor sacred contradictions within the aesthetic and socio-political category of "feminine."
I received my B.A. in painting and mixed media installation from Wesleyan University in 2023, and I am now preparing a new body of work for exhibition and performance. Through collage, installation, painting, and dance, I love to bring different artistic traditions into conversation with each other in pursuit of the unapologetically beautiful and complex.
My father is Barbadian, and my mother is half Indian, half American. My maternal grandmother, my Nani, carries with her stories of both Punjab, where she was raised, and Andhra Pradesh, where her family took refuge from the India-Pakistan Partition. It was there that she fell in love with the South Indian dance style of Kuchipudi, a love that she has passed on to me and countless others.
Lucia Shuyu Li
Lucia Shuyu Li, based on the East Coast of the U.S., is a visual and sound artist
and the founder of LESSNESS Art collective. Her multimedia work includes but is not
limited to paintings, installations, performance art, and experimental music.
www.luceeyali.com
Bao Nguyen
Bao Nguyen (they/them) is an experimental vocalist and performance artist born in
Vietnam and based in Baltimore. Incorporating improvised singing, audience participation,
and movement, Bao creates site-specific one-on-one and small group performances in
natural landscapes and sacred spaces to connect the audience’s life story into nature’s
life cycle. Bao completed their B.F.A. at Maryland Institute College of Art and is
pursuing their M.F.A. at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. They have exhibited
in the U.S. and abroad, including shows at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and
Ewha Woman University, Korea. In 2022, they were awarded the Judson Morrissey Excellence
in New Media Award from the New Media Caucus. Bao recently completed their residency
at Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art.
baonguyenstudio.com
azumi O E
The raw value of live performance is what fuels Butoh dancer azumi O E. Mesmerizing, shocking, and playful movement is choreographed with meticulous timing, conspiring a visual relationship between the inner and outer human dimensions. Azumi wields her physical form as an expression and exploration of full individuality routed by the notion of collective oneness. Following eight years with New York-based company Vangeline Theatre and as an assistant choreographer/principal dancer for Butoh Master Katsura Kan, azumi O E makes a continuous effort to exceed artistic constructs. She regularly develops experimental projects through solo pieces and collaborations with artists of various mediums. Notable co-operative works span video art and live performance with contemporary visual artist MARCK, composer Takuya Nakamura, “Impulsive Instrument” with bassist Sean Ali, and an upcoming duo with bassist Tim Dahl. She had an artist residency at the John Hopkins Peabody Institute in 2023-24 and was a 2024 NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellow in Choreography.
Setsuhi Shiraishi
A professional calligrapher and Shodo master, Setsuhi Shiraishi continues to pursue the beauty of the lines and spaces that influence the viewers momentarily. She sublimes calligraphy as a comprehensive art, collaborating with other arts in a unique style while transmitting the world of traditional calligraphy. Her live performances create fusion with live music that attracts many fans all over the world.
She designed the concept of the new uniform for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Japan National Team, "Circle." She worked with Shiseido for their brand Clé de Peau Beauté, and works to transcend the frame, such as producing TRM of Panasonic and wall paintings of Oracle Japan.
She worked at the installation at the Japan Pavilion certification event at Expo Milan and performed at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. She was an invited artist at Abiko International Outdoor Art Exhibition Installation.
She has done solo exhibitions in Paris, New York, San Francisco, the JICC Embassy of Japan, and Baltimore. She has worked in Baltimore and many cities along the East Coast, touring regularly with OTS productions and Kinbakuartistmiki since 2017.
Instagram @setsuhi_eri_shiraishi
Ni Xin
A multidisciplinary artist whose art practice explores sex, gender, and politics through humor. She transforms ready-made objects and plays with her body to make objects, performance, and social intervention pieces. "My work is my reaction to my surroundings. I encounter myself in the world."