5&Under

5&Under

FEBRUARY 17 – MARCH 6, 2020

stArt gallery

stArt’s annual 5&Under program invites Wake Forest alumni who have graduated within the last five years to engage with current students about their transition after graduation into art-connected careers in the arts.

This year stArt is pleased to welcome back Kristi Chan (’15 Studio Art) and Natalie Brashear (’15 Art History).

On Feb. 24th, 3:30pm in Hanes Gallery, both Natalie and Kristi will give brief talks about their experiences post-Wake, followed by a reception at stArt gallery at 4:30pm in the presence of Krisiti’s exhibition, Bodies of Water.

The following day, Feb. 25th from 11:30-12:30pm, we will be having a Brunch Meet and Greet in the Scales Fine Arts Center Lobby, providing students another opportunity to learn from our visiting alums.

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“The brief span of an individual life is misleading. Each one of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom; our bloodstreams are tributaries of the great sea in its total memory.” – JG Ballard, The Drowned World

Kristiana Chan’s Bodies of Water is a multimedia installation that explores the ancestral and biological heritage of water. This exhibit presents a video installation, sound collage, and a series of seawater developed cyanotype prints. Exploring water as an ancient medium of memory, the artist attempts to capture traces of the lives previously lived in and around specific bodies of water. In an effort to understand a recurring dream, she repeatedly visits shoreline sites around the Bay Area where Chinese fishermen once lived and worked asking the ocean, “What do you remember?” Bodies of Water address the sea as a maternal entity, offering the viewer passage into the aquatic unconscious, transporting us to the past, present, and unseen worlds that lie below the surface of the psyche.

About the Artist: Kristiana Chan is a first generation Malaysian-Chinese artist, writer, and educator whose work explores the intersection of ancestry, healing, and mythology. Exploring a strong spiritual connection to nature and natural processes, she attempts to untangle the myths and traumas of heritage, migration, and displacement while reclaiming the feminine identity and matrilineal inheritance within the Asian American diaspora. She combines traditional storytelling and art making techniques of embroidery, paper cut, and shadow puppetry with projections, alternative photo processes, and other new media. She is a graduate of the New York Foundation of Arts Immigrant Artist Mentorship program, is a 2019 resident at the Growlery in San Francisco, a teaching artist in residence for Performing Arts Workshop, and helped curate 2018’s visual arts showcase at Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture festival. Kristiana is based in the Bay Area.

The artist would like to thank Patricia Lim, KC Chan, Kaylin Chan, Kylie Chan, Taylor Lahey, Kija Lucas, Jean Chadbourne, Alice Wu, Marlim Reynosa, Katie Kron, Megan Leppla, Striffolino, Sumi Leppla, Meng Yu, Michelle Ting, Antonius Bui, Tiffany Lin, Renae L. Muas, Brown Girl Surf, Work in Progress, Performing Arts Workshop, the NYFA IAM 2019 cohort, and Nopalito 9th Ave. for all their love, support, and nourishment in the production of this show.