Previously, Ahn studied at UCLA as a Eugene V. Cota Robles Graduate Fellow. Ahn is a 2022 MFA graduate of the UC Berkeley Art Practice Department. They are the 2021 Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award Winner, a 2022 Watershed Ceramics Zenobia Fellow, and a 2022-23 Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellow. In 2024, Ahn will be a resident at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and an artist in California Clay at Bedford Gallery alongside Cathy Lu.
Ahn Lee
Cocoon Performance, September 2021
Ceremony performed under Ahn Lee sculpture
45-minute ceremony performed by Jas Lin and Kyoko Takenaka underneath Ahn Lee's sculpture of the same title, September 2021.
“‘Cocoon’ sprang from research on the Piedmont Silk Experiment in Oakland, in which Mrs. Hittle purchased land via federal funding and published a call to ‘awake to action’ via appropriating silkworm farming, or U.S. domesticity would be ‘hopeless’ against Chinese immigration (18th Century Press). A performance below [the sculpture] showed the silkworm embodied as a conduit of the Cantonese diaspora amidst anti-Chinese sentiment.
Exploring grief through the container of a cocoon, the performers embody ancestry and progeny, railroad worker and Chop Suey circuit nightclub dancer, silkworm and moth, light and shadow, as they move through non-linear cycles of metamorphosis between the simultaneous truths of trauma, pain, freedom, and joy in their lineage.”
— Ahn Lee
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About the artist
Ahn Lee
American
Previously, Ahn studied at UCLA as a Eugene V. Cota Robles Graduate Fellow. Ahn is a 2022 MFA graduate of the UC Berkeley Art Practice Department. They are the 2021 Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award Winner, a 2022 Watershed Ceramics Zenobia Fellow, and a 2022-23 Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellow. In 2024, Ahn will be a resident at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and an artist in California Clay at Bedford Gallery alongside Cathy Lu.
