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limina, lumina,,. October 19 – November 23, 2024. Lindsey Harald-Wong, Narong Tintamusik, Catherine Menard, Daniel Schubert, October Anderson, Mayolo Figueroa, Kento Saisho. Group exhibition.

4478 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016.

[Fine Print: This text is a path through or alongside some contexts and un/consciousnesses of the exhibition’s timing, and is not a directive or a map of intent. It is a way getting the different currents and folds of the text, the gallery, and the exhibition to talk to themselves in front of others—a way of giving an account of how we arrived here. (At the borderlands of a start, a fit). And like any path or way, it may be followed or avoided (or forgotten).]

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Limina, plural of ‘limen,’ a crossing of a limit—a threshold of a crossing. At least doubled: a multiplied borderlands, a multiple border….

            A word from anatomy: lumina, (plural of ‘lumen’): “the central cavity of a tubular or other hollow structure in an organism or cell.” From the late-19th century: from Latin, literally ‘opening.’ Or, a word from physics, from Latin, ‘light.’ So a hollow, a light, or an opening. But not an absence—but maybe a pathway or passage. A connection between different parts or places (of a body). A medium: a movement between limits, between thresholds, between limina,

            a word from psychology: limina, (plural of ‘limen’): “a threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived or is not distinguished from another.” From mid-17th century: from Latin, ‘threshold.’ A repeat horizon, a litmus test.[1]

            An anatomy, a psychology, a physicality(, and a test): some opposed limits of (studies or disciplines of) a body and its circulations or disturbances. Interstitial, in-between forms whose lacks form the limits of the other. A non-orientable tubular twisting, whirling, whorling, spiraling of one along the lacks and limits another, until it becomes the next one. Annihilated, illuminated. Se elimina, se ilumina. A heteroglossia (spoken like a spell).

            (“ limina, lumina,,”)

                                                A complex communication, between

            limina,                                                                                             lumina,,

—or maybe the doubled way the words sound in a sequence is enough to give some lips to their definition, some starting-points. Limb, limn, lim, loom, lume. Repetitions, differences.

….

(…mind the gaps…)

Already at the threshold of this exhibition (text) is the place of an artwork and the gallery itself as a record, cipher, seam, or portal between[2] positions of a body: between inside and outside, subject and object, self and other, surface and void, sense and nonsense, delirium and lucidity, hunger and satiation, life and death, night and day, (past,) present and future…. But these continual pairings tend to be sleepy, soporific sequences (recurring like dog bites (bad) dreams) that rest on inherited dualities, hypnotic habits, and regulated orders. On alreadies and over-and-overs.

            This is probably why “liminals,” as ways of saying some kind of in-between or limit space (of the body), show-up as recurring turns in contemporary artistic practices and exhibitions alike. And this is probably at least part of the reason why, in (‘globalized’) contemporary contexts of cultural (art)work, social practices, and academic research, a between often appears in the place of a disinheritance or disidentification—a break—with conventional, traditional, or already-operational positions (or professions): inter-disciplinary, inter-sectionality, cross-cultural, trans-corporeality…. (Even the “post-,” “non-,” and “multi-” versions suggest something of a betweenness since they all still function to displace a practice beyond prior positions or singular borders.) So, then, what are liminals (or their involution: luminals) and how would we work with what it says? Historically, habitually, these breaks (or bridges?) have produced hopefully critical perspectives and practices organized around hybrid identities and split positions, a kind of borderlands realized through a re-focusing on relations and complex connections between bodies staked at their limits and the linguistic, social, political, and economic systems they inhabit.[3] Though, of course, turns of phrase won’t necessarily pull us from the rift they are pointing-to. (Especially when they remain locked-into the same master dialect(ic) of binary structures.) But maybe this work is symptomatic of a between as a power[4] forming in the place of a resistance or insurgency, of a place on the verge of transformation or transition—of somewhere that refuses to stay-still. Somewhere elsewhere and otherwise. Something different and distant (while remaining… 

                                                                                  …right at the center, nearby).

            Sometime between altæred states and changes of phase. Something at its limits, on the brink. Crossroads. A passing or passage. (An eclipse.) An interval between or beyond event horizons: at the edge of energy and information (or apparitions). A hole with its brim as the abyss.

            Something liminal, luminal. Some limina, lumina,,

Remaining at the limen, at the perforated threshold of these precarious, shifting states, how might we work with relations between more than one border, more than one (being-in-a-) body, multiple divisions and disorientations, more than one inside or outside (all while remaining between)….?

            Or, what would it be to account for a betweenness without only defining its equalized limits, without reducing asymmetrical doubles and (two)folds to the symmetry of binaries and dichotomies? Couples without clean-cut complements. (After all, there’s already a 3 in a 2: a third part that parts, partitions.) Picture a hollow cylinder or a torus: an AC duct: a limit and a void, a limen and a lumen: what look like distinct kinds or parts might be different phases of the same entity, or a continuous transformation that only appears static when I have to see it (like the blades of a moving fan). Stillness and drift: what would it be to work with both at the same time, with limits (lines) and lacks? What would it be to work with betweenness as this interstitial, primordial process of producing distance and difference without reducing it to a null, blinking instant of forgetting? (And without reducing it to some kind of mystical fluid—without falling with its vertigo.) To work with a betweenness as a medium and material—a substrate or substance—as well as a moment and a movement. As a space, a time, an un/consciousness, an event—a timing (and a place). (And as a language.)

            Initially (and ultimately), the exhibition keeps asking about the status of a between as a paradoxical place that structures a variety of relations: physical, psychical, structural, social, (al)chemical, political, spatial, temporal, historical.... Basically, what does it mean for something or someone to be “between” (rather than decidedly occurring on any particular ‘side’)? Where is between? What takes-place in-between (and what’s out-between)?

Built with works that gather as they form, as they cross, the exhibition installs these questions and problems of betweenness by working-through the uniquely ranging im/materialities and bodies of each piece and their interrelations with others. While most of the artists are based here in Los Angeles, there are two artists from elsewhere: Harald-Wong is based in Malaysia, and Tintamusik is based in Texas. So, on a certain level this question of borders, crossings, customs, and distances is a practical dimension of the works’ realities and the exhibition’s position between heres and theres. And, in general, the pieces tend toward a performance of bordered, liminal, luminal—interstitial—states along every dimension of their production: materially, conceptually, technically….

            Ranging between sculptural metalwork, terrestrial painting, frenetic drawing, resinous condensations (or plasticky indigestions), suspended (Thai) foods, nighttime photography, and clairvoyant durational (video and sound) work, the array of media supplies variable entryways to the paths of the exhibition (both within and beyond the scope addressed by this text—there’s always some light that escapes!). Folding onto themselves, many of the materials are reflective of their techniques and (conceptual) processes (and vice-versa): a sculptural painting with food that seems to present a suspended moment of digestion (a stuffed lumen, a full void, something in-the-middle of being processed); little balls of steel-shot hotly sutured into pointillistic contours that never really decide whether they are made of points or lines; still-sticky pieces of tape tiling themselves into a trace of their double displayed on the ground; a photograph of (the San Gabriel River at) night (that is, light capturing the limits of what’s illuminated (and remember: a river is as in-between as the night, especially when in it (either one)); some weathered, landlike paintings hanging like a signpost at a crossroads; a yonic, cloven monolith that splits its visions between activity and an aftermath—an after/life; and works on paper that hold the imprints and traces of contact and crossings—papers that are the mediums as much as the marks made upon them, that are lifeforms as much as those who made them.

            All of the works show multiple depths of a surface, object, or duration. And any image seems to resist its status as something readily seen (as is particularly evident with Figueroa’s photograph). Together, the pieces might demonstrate ways of presenting—not representing—interstitialities of limina and lumina without reducing them to any particular state, or any particular instance, of betweenness. They show limits becoming pathways, and viscera becoming husks. (And then they do it all again in the opposite direction, moving back-and-forth like a typewriter’s ribbon (like this limning text).)

Eventually, working-through this middled place of in-betweens may also lead toward the contours of power and the borders of regulatory systems.[5] By the fact of being a process of transition and communication (of difference), an in-between is a place of vulnerability—and opening-up—where ‘one thing’ often leads to ‘another.’ It is a place of action and exchange between instances, between bodies, between informations. And therefore it is a place of potential violation and violence, as well as a place of necessary change (of moving from one point to another…). It is based on what happens ‘in-between’ that lines of power are drawn (written)—and along these borderlines the organizations of systems are rendered and redistributed. As an economy. Or, hopefully, as an ethics (self-constructed (with others)). Or, maybe, as an aesthetics in the place of an ethics. Or as a site of becoming—of radical embodiments. As Maria Lugones says in her essay “On Complex Communication,”

That is, to place ourselves in the limen, in a borderland, is to conceive of “ourselves” as not exhausted by domination. […] Indeed, as liminal we need to engage in a poiesis, a self-construction, an arduous and dangerous process.[6]

But to conceive of such “a poiesis, a self-construction” in terms of a non-dual or de-doubled betweenness would be to reconsider a borderlands as a non-binary multiplicity or interstitiality, more than a hybridity or a mere split (of identity or position (nationality)). An undecidability, and a shifting (but not uncertain) agency, that produces a series of differences and distances across or between dis/connected spaces and times. A ribboned, drifting navigation between others and alters, limits and hollows. Between limina, lumina,,

            Limina, plural of ‘limen,’ a multiplied borderland, a multiple border. A crossing, a limit—a threshold of a crossing,

            a word from psychology: limen, a repeat horizon, a litmus test. Where something begins its presencing.

            Lumina, a word from anatomy: lumina, a hollow, a light, or an opening. But not an absence—but maybe a pathway or passage. A connection between different parts or places (of a body). A medium: a movement between limits, between thresholds, between limina,

                                                                        lumina,,

….

An indifference between a definition and a delirium—or, some snowdrifts and scarecrows

At this point, I’m still repeating a minimal question: what’s the difference or equivalence between a relation, a connection, a gap, a boundary, an interval, and an in-between? With all this circling around what is being said, there’s still something difficult to define about an “in-between.” Despite its frequency and apparent necessity for saying and situating split or middled states, something seems to disappear in its place as soon as everything around it assumes position—like the distance between each of these letters, the difference between each of these words. But sometimes it seems like a between might be more immediately recognized. Like the lumina—the hollow tunnelings—of the massive AC duct that runs through gallery like a lunged rib cage. (Or the metal shell that makes its limina.) Or, as the exposed framing of the gallery walls and ceilings: the spaces between beams, the gaps between 2 x 4s. Like the geometry of points, lines, and voids (or faces): a boundary, a line | as a writing or drawing between each side that gathers along its signing, its seaming.

            Or maybe the void (or the face) is an in-between. Or maybe the line was a hollow tunnel to begin with, a cut. Or maybe the points at the intersections are the in-betweens, only appearing at the crossings as punctures of perspective. Or, maybe, this indecisive turning from one place to another is a symptom of the slippery relativity of this liminal, luminal,, place. A limit or a horizon, a hollow or a pathway. A bounded burrowing. Dilating, doubling.

Where it’s ribs when its lungs. Ribbed, lunged.

In any case, to repeat and reiterate: as much as an in-between seems to defy categorization or containment, it is also precisely the position that makes categorization and containment (of something, somewhere, someone, or sometime else) possible. A way of accounting for in/distinction, change, movement (between limits); or, lapses, lacks, and gaps. It is a necessary act of documentation or recording—a record. And a process: a processing materializes as an in-between: a latent, unseen, or forgotten transformation. A productive negation, a negative magnitude (maybe).[7]

            …But as I am already back to circling, there’s obviously some kind of vertigo creeping-in here, between a definition and the delirium it sets-off. At a first glance, or if only handed-over textually, these flashes are still stuck in narrative definitions and spatial imaginations (and metaphors) of an in-between; and an “in-between” is also a necessary structure of time and movement, a practice or process of material phases and shifts. But without an object at hand, without the act or performance of actually passing-through the exhibition, it’s likely impossible to overcome an imagination of an in-between—it’s likely not possible to work with this timing or temporality of a between as an interval.

            Without an object or some kind of bodily entanglement with the works, it’s all just snowdrifts and scarecrows, baby! (Dangerously gathered-up like unsown seeds by the winds, or deceitfully made to scare you away like a peckish bird.) And this work with limina, lumina,, requires an activation or activism (like keeping-track of these commas,,,), a direct working-along the object: the exhibition (and its populations). It requires the time to actually play-out: an interval of necessary distance or difference (between events) inflicted by time—but also by the gaze, or at the least an act of observation. (An act of going-to the gallery.)

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[1] Citations of word references are from the Oxford English Dictionary.

[2] The gallery is located in the central unit in our building, it’s in the middle, between two other units on the lower level.

[3] In Europe and the Americas (from global Souths (and Easts)), many of these discourses are initially rooted in anti-colonial and post-colonial contexts of the 20th century, where colonized artists and intellectuals—often educated by the colonial system while living in the colonial metropole—were forced to give an account of their split positions while finding forms of agency from within alienated states (using the colonial language). For (plucked) examples, see: Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952); Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950); Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation (1990); Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988); Homi K. Bhabha, The location of culture (1994); Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument” (2003); Judith Butler, Giving an account of oneself  (2003); Susan Stryker, Transgender History (2008); Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014) [notice the elapsed time before works dealing with transgender histories indigenous histories make their way into the academic-institutional picture (I encountered this text in an American Studies course)]. (For a moment of departure from the “inter-,” which continues up-through the present moment, see, Jasbir K. Puar, ““I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory” (2012). More, in the context of art, the so-called “social turn” of the late 20th century and the irruption of relational aesthetics marks a condensation or peak of these “inter-,” “cross-,” and “trans-” aesthetic articulations of a betweenness as an ethical place between bodies. A kind of social tissue connecting artworks and those that participate in viewing and producing works of art. And the post-relational and post-studio art of the current moment further complicates the borders of the in-between (almost to the degree that we are in search of with this work), but these positions ultimately reinstall a binary or dual relation between studio and non-studio, relational and non-relational—progressive and conventional. They become their own ideology of place, rather than remaining speculative or specular (which seems necessary for theories and practices stemming from negation).

[4] A latent energy that can be usurped, embodied.

[5] From a distance, a first glance at the (inherent, inherited) borders of this exhibition begins with looking at the span of its global context and the different, distant—but not necessarily disconnected—cultural and aesthetic concepts of (something like) betweenness that occur across different art histories. Or, maybe more urgently, the relations between the works and the artists in this exhibition quietly lead to questions of how invisible boundaries become geographic and social borders to systems of knowledge and spatial “development.” (And of how these latencies might be presented or made visible by an artwork.) While I have already surveyed a hasty bit of a globalized Western (Euro-American) trajectory along the lines of identity politics and relational poetics, similar ethical/aesthetic questions could be—and are being—raised with traction elsewhere and otherwise (and these have certainly infiltrated—if they weren’t already appropriated by—contemporary “global” contexts). (For earlier historical examples, see: (20th century) Japanese cultural theories responding to Western, “individualistic” ontologies (e.g., Watsuji Tetsurō, Rinrigaku), and Swahili conceptions of time that cycle and store ancestry, memory, and history with non-linear, or at least braided, paces (e.g., J. S Mbiti on the “Sasa and Zamani); and, more recently, postcolonial theories of “necropower” and “necropolitics” work to identify the violence and power of liminal states designed by settler colonialisms (e.g., Mbembe, Necropolitics). (There is not enough time to cover these discourses here and do them justice, but offering some fragments and noting some references may still help break-out of the closure installed by Western art histories. This dimension of this writing will be given space in a forthcoming supplementary text, Telepathies and Globals.) All of these tangles pose problems of translation and communication as problems of crossing some kind of difference—and transmitting across this difference.

[6] Maria Lugones, "On Complex Communication," Hypatia 21.3 (2006): 75-85. 77.

[7] Immanuel Kant, “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Quantities into Philosophy” (‘Versuch, den Begriff der negativen Grössen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen’) (1763).

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Bios + States

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Narong Tintamusik (ณรงค์ ตินติ ตมุสิมุ กสิ) is an artist and curator based in Dallas, TX. His work is autobiographical, mining elements from his second-generation Thai-American upbringing, Queer identity, Buddhist spirituality, and previous career in the biological sciences. Working within the painting and its iterations, he uses his Thai heritage to imagine an ancestral future to survive against society's current biopolitics. His works ask us to reconsider and revise the infrastructure surrounding contemporary modes of living, such as the overconsumption of ultra-processed food, waste colonialism, and cultural assimilation.

Born in Dallas, TX, he lived in Bangkok, Thailand, for ten years. His parents firmly persuaded him not to major in art in college, so he obtained his undergraduate biology degree from the University of Texas at Dallas with a minor in visual arts in 2014. After working in the environmental science industry for seven years, he decided to follow his dreams to study art thoroughly. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Drawing from the University of North Texas. He is grateful to have studied and worked in a different field like science since it encouraged him to find new variables to enter his work continually.

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My research envisions a dystopian future shaped by human-induced environmental collapse, where survival depends on a return to cultural traditions. Through paintings, sculptures, and wearable art, I critique systems like overconsumption of ultra-processed foods, waste colonialism, and cultural assimilation. I am focusing on Thai food and the sustenance it provides to us physically and spiritually, while reflecting on my experience as a second-generation Thai-American.

In an imagined world where fresh ingredients are scarce, people have to rely on preserved foods passed down from ancestors and become largely nomadic. My interdisciplinary art explores the movement of food through bodies and landscapes, using materials like Thai ingredients, wastewater, plastic, wood, acrylics. By envisioning a desolate future using Thai food as a medium, my artworks serve as a warning and encourage us to rethink what future generations will inherit. They also inspire new ideas to revise our collective future for the better.

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October Anderson (b. 1999, Los Angeles) is an American, trans-nonbinary, interdisciplinary artist living and working in Los Angeles, California. Anderson’s installations, performances, and works on paper investigate the optics of intelligence and the (mis)use of language as a site of knowledge production. Anderson has previously exhibited in Bolsky Gallery (Los Angeles), Intersect Gallery (Los Angeles), and The Folk Lounge (Los Angeles), and several of their works belong to the private collections of affiliates of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Otis College of Art and Design, among others. Anderson earned their Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design in 2024, having graduated with the Joseph Mugnaini Award for Distinction in Drawing and the Distinction in Studio Art Award.

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October Anderson is an interdisciplinary artist producing work through text, performance, sculpture, and installation. Anderson utilizes innocuous, single-use materials such as pressure-sensitive tape in conjunction with archival paper to generate discourse around how worth is afforded to information through convenience, reverence, and visibility. Anderson’s work investigates Western notions of intelligence and what it means to cultivate the authority of expertise under capitalistic ideals. Anderson invents time-consuming systems of organization with the intention of creating situations in which their own labor is disregarded to expose the arbitrary nature of value. Anderson is a lover of the hybridized, always meaning for their work to function as contradictory, all-at-once and nothing-at-all. In this way, Anderson finds themself engaged in both the mimicry and mockery of the value systems they critique. To Anderson, mimicry serves as a pathway to agency and a means to become an impactful dupe, while mockery is a kind of prestige that unveils new knowledges as perceptions of truth begin to crack. By examining the rituals, gestures, and aesthetics of colonial intelligence, and its resulting systems of authority, Anderson reveals both the arbitrary nature of Western logics and the violence that comes with seeing intellect as stagnant and universal. Anderson’s practice is informed by trans linguistics, reconfiguration, and Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of the Third Space.

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Kento Saisho (he/him) is an artist and metalworker currently based in Los Angeles, CA. He makes vigorously textured and tactile sculptural objects, vessels, and contemporary artifacts in steel that utilize and push the material’s potential for transformation. Born and raised in Salinas, CA, he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2016, where he was a Windgate-Lamar Fellowship recipient from the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC. Following this, he completed the Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Craft from 2018-2020. He was also a recipient of the inaugural Emerging Artist Cohort from the American Craft Council (ACC) in 2021 and the 2022 Career Advancement Grant from the Center for Craft. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and is currently represented by Citron Gallery in Asheville, NC. His wok was previously included at a (three-artist) group show at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles) in Fall 2023: Skins, Holes, and Hovels (October 14 - November 11, 2023).

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Born at 10:57am on Christmas morning in Lafayette, Louisiana 1986

Lives and works in Los Angeles, California

Catherine Menard is a Los Angeles based artist working across a range of media including video, performance, installation, painting, and sculpture. She often unites these elements to create site-specific and immersive environments that may amount to “total works.” Menard trained classically as a ballet dancer for over ten years, graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy as a Theatre Performance major (2005) and received both her Bachelor of Science in Spatial Experience Design (2014) and Master of Fine Art (2023) from ArtCenter College of Design. She has trained theatrically with Playhouse West (Sanford Meisner), clowning with Idiot Workshop, Kira Nova and Kevin Krieger, Butoh with master Oguri (student of Hijikata) as well as with master Hiroko Tamano of Harupin-Ha Dance Theater. She has studied shamanic practices with The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Jungian Psychology with Pacifica Graduate Institute, and divination with The Golden Dome School and the Philosophical Research Society.

She has been internationally recognized for her permanent public artwork—The Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial—completed in 2015 and located in Pasadena’s Memorial Park. She has lectured at Glendale Community College, has presented for Place By Design at the SXSW Eco Conference in their inaugural year, and served in panel discussions at the Brand Library and Art Center which explored “Art as a path to social justice and collective healing.”

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My practice is guided by an attraction to objects that stimulate free association and present opportunities to construct conceptual propositions. These propositions often activate found objects as dynamic actors, forgotten pop music as prophesy, and my body as a site for ridicule, adoration and humor, to explore and interrogate personal and cultural histories.

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Mayolo Figueroa (b. 2002) is an artist from El Monte, California. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Otis College of Art and Design and lives and works out of Los Angeles. He has a multidisciplinary practice that mainly focuses on photography but also utilizes sound and found objects to explore his relationships with land and family. He investigates what it means for someone or something to belong in a certain place or time, whether in nature or with one another. He has recently been working with the San Gabriel River to explore how climate change and urban development have significantly impacted this river's ecology and how by being at the margin, ecologically liminal places like this are often forgotten about or pushed aside.

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Daniel Schubert’s interdisciplinary practice is driven by the land from where he lives, the materials he collects & his time as a longhaul truckdriver. Schubert maintains a studio near where he is from in Los Angeles.

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Lindsey Harald-Wong (born: Denver, Colorado, United States) is an artist based in Malaysia, where she currently lives and works. She was formerly on the faculty of Pratt Institute and at Parsons School of Design in New York, where she taught drawing. She earned an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing at Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York. Harald-Wong has also studied at the New York Studio School of Painting and Drawing.

Her earlier work begins at the level of perception, directly drawing from light and space and working between the limits of vision and abstraction. These earlier works were often produced around still-life imagery (such as flowers, especially orchids). Eventually, beginning in the early 2000s, around the time of the work Small Cosmos (2005) included in a group exhibition at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles: Fall 2024), her work starts to shift to more immediate encounters with the surface (paper, canvas) itself—and with mark-making itself—through a generative practice produced at its own pace, in response to its own processes. (Small Cosmos presents an intermediary or transitional moment between her work with perception and the works driven by abstraction.)

Living in Malaysia, Harald-Wong works in relative isolation from Western economic and social contexts of contemporary art. But within this isolation she has cultivated a practice of working-through a deep time that uniquely evolves through its own language. A cryptic, but immediate, mode of expression made of frenetic marks and webbed movements that have patiently, meditatively, morphed over many years of working in her own terms.

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