A photography print of a man inside a minaret tower. A ceramic chalice. A tissue paper collage illustration from a children’s book. A short film about a trip to Europe with friends.

Each of these pieces of artwork was created by Asian American artists from North Texas and featured in the Dallas Asian American Art Collective’ first annual art show over the weekend.

The co-curators Leili Arai Tavallaei, Jackie Tao Law and Christina J. Hahn, who are all Dallas-based artists, partnered with The Cedars Union where they put on the show.

Tavallaei said the collective wanted to reflect the diversity of emerging and established AAPI artists in North Texas. The co-curator is a printmaker, mixed-media painter and animator whose work explores her mixed race identity as someone with parents who are Persian Iranian and Hāfu, mixed Japanese identity.

“A lot of people, when they hear of Asian artists, they usually think of international Asian artists that have made it big across the pond,” she said. “We here want to kind of make a statement that we are, in fact, here in the States. We are here in Texas.”

Law said that distinction of being an Asian American artist matters because being part of the diaspora is an entirely different experience from being Asian.

“You end up having this blend of maybe your home culture and then being from wherever you immigrated to,” said Law, who is a first-generation Hakka Chinese visual artist.

Here are some of the artists who displayed work at the show:

Courtesy of Jorenzo Mallari

Jorenzo Mallari, video “To Here and Back”

Growing up way out east in Tyler, Mallari said his family would travel two hours one-way to get groceries from the Hong Kong Market Place in Dallas. It was part of his family’s Sunday ritual: get a haircut, buy groceries and head home.

Mallari said there’s a “small but mighty” Filipino community in Tyler, but for a long time there wasn’t a space to pick up basic ingredients to make food from his culture.

“When I was a kid, I was annoyed that we would have to be there. But as I got older, I appreciated how important that was, how some of my favorite foods we wouldn’t have been able to make it or they wouldn’t have been my favorite foods had we not gone there.”

The second-generation Filipino American filmmaker describes “To Here and Back” as a visual tone poem that reflects the immigrant story.

“I think it’s about coming back to a place and seeing how time has changed it even though it’s kind of stayed the same in your head,” he said.

Juan Figueroa

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The Dallas Morning News

Dongjing Zhang Berglund, fountain pen on paper “People Studies”

Berglund said last year she focused on “trying to be more Chinese” and returning to her roots. A big part of that has been drawing scenes from everyday life in China, including sketches of three delivery drivers, a night market full of delicious snacks or people waiting in line with thick parkas.

“I was just there about a year ago during the winter when everyone was in the big, puffy jackets which is not something you see in Texas,” she said.

Juan Figueroa

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The Dallas Morning News

Originally from Beijing, the artist – who works as a web architect by day – now lives in Plano with her family. She sometimes makes sketches from photos and online reference art, which reminds her of how different the scenery is back in China.

“I remember the hutongs, which are the little alleys. I remember wearing my red scarf as a little kid and the yellow hats in elementary,” she said. “Seeing those things in drawings brings back a lot of memories.”

Juan Figueroa

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The Dallas Morning News

Jae Hyun Choi, acrylic and chalk on canvas “Immanence” and “Mu-je”

Choi is a medical student in North Texas by day and artist by night. His colorful, abstract paintings don’t immediately seem to reference language but that’s the inspiration for his work.

He said he incorporates Chinese typography into his pieces as a system that connects Korean and Japanese, the two languages that he speaks.

The artist said he wanted to explore questions like: “How do we represent the world through language? What are some ways that you can kind of twist or distort or play with the form of language to represent the world?”

Choi said language has been an important way to connect with loved ones.

“It’s how I feel connected to my family abroad. Whenever I go back to that language context, it feels like coming home in a way,” he said. “I feel like so much of Korean culture is bound up in the way language is constructed, in the way you relate to people and honorifics.”

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