Reflections on Home and Abroad (Alisan Fine Arts New York), How Asian Is It? (The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation), and recent conversations on contemporary Asian art in New York.

Text by Webson Ji, Asian Art Contemporary™

Contemporary Asian art occupies a distinctive position within New York’s art ecosystem. It is often used to describe artists connected by geography, migration, ethnicity, or cultural heritage, even though their work frequently begins from very different points of departure. Rather than identifying a single artistic position, contemporary Asian art often functions as an umbrella for multiple artistic trajectories.

Over the past several years, building Asian artist communities through a nonprofit arts organization in New York has allowed me to work closely with artists based across Asia, Asian diaspora artists, and Asian American artists, while collaborating with galleries, museums, universities, and independent arts organizations throughout the city. Across these conversations, one observation has remained consistent: artists grouped under the term “contemporary Asian art” often begin from fundamentally different starting points. They are not necessarily responding to the same histories, asking the same questions, or working toward the same artistic concerns.

That observation was reinforced while visiting Home and Abroad, on view at Alisan Fine Arts New York from July 9 through August 28, 2026. Celebrating the gallery’s 45th anniversary, the exhibition brings together more than thirty artists through three curatorial sections—Reinventing Tradition, New York Voices, and Home and Abroad. Rather than presenting a chronological survey of Chinese contemporary art, the exhibition places artists working across generations and cultural contexts into dialogue. The curatorial structure is less concerned with establishing a single historical narrative than with revealing multiple artistic trajectories existing simultaneously.

This perspective continues in How Asian Is It?, presented at The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation from May 8 through July 26, 2026. Curated by Lilly Wei, the exhibition brings together twelve Asian American abstract painters whose work resists easy cultural categorization. As Wei writes in the accompanying essay, ” Artists are not predictable, nor is the art they make—which is as it should be. Artists should be free to make the work they choose to make, and not be compelled to pursue choices that have been determined for them.” Rather than reinforcing identity as a fixed interpretive framework, the exhibition invites viewers to reconsider how contemporary Asian art is read in the first place.

Neither exhibition attempts to define contemporary Asian art. Instead, both demonstrate that the field becomes more meaningful when approached through artistic inquiry rather than predetermined categories.

Working across these different contexts, I have found myself returning to three recurring observations.

For many Asian diaspora artists, a recurring question is: 

How do I translate?

Translation extends far beyond language. It becomes a way of navigating different educational systems, artistic traditions, cultural expectations, and lived experiences. Included in Home and Abroad, Yang Jiechang’s Hundred Layers of Ink, developed after his move from Guangzhou to Paris, transforms ink painting through repetition and conceptual process. Rather than preserving tradition unchanged, the work demonstrates how artistic traditions continue to evolve as they move across different cultural environments.

For many Asian American artists, another question emerges: 

Where do I come from?

Family archives, memory, ancestry, and cultural inheritance frequently become the foundation of artistic inquiry. Also included in Home and Abroad, Summer Mei-Ling Lee layers family photographs, translucent gauze, and gold leaf to reconstruct inherited histories across generations. Rather than translating between cultures, her work reflects an effort to understand what has been preserved, what has been forgotten, and what can still be carried forward.

For many artists living and working in Asia, the question is often different: 

How do I respond to where I already am?

Cities, labor, materiality, technology, ecology, politics, and everyday life frequently become the central subjects of artistic practice. Cultural identity remains one possible reading, but not always the artist’s primary concern. Also featured in Home and Abroad, Malaysian artist Justin Lim turns toward domestic interiors and the visual culture of everyday life, demonstrating how contemporary Asian art is equally shaped by artists responding directly to their own social and cultural environments.

These observations are not intended to construct another system of categorization. Artists move between different concerns throughout their careers, and many practices resist any fixed interpretive framework. What matters is not where artists are placed, but where their work begins.

These ideas extended beyond the exhibitions during a recent public conversation at Alisan Fine Arts between Richard Vine, former Managing Editor of Art in America, and Jenny Wang, Editor-in-Chief of IMPULSE Magazine. Rather than seeking a definitive description of contemporary Asian art, the discussion returned to many of the same questions raised by Home and Abroad and How Asian Is It? How should contemporary Asian art be understood? Can one institutional framework adequately describe artists working across such different cultural and social contexts?

Categories such as Asian art, Asian American art, and Asian diaspora art have long shaped how contemporary Asian art is presented and discussed. While these categories continue to influence institutional narratives, they cannot fully represent the diversity of artistic practices within the field. The contemporary Asian art ecosystem is built not by labels, but by the artists and art professionals who question, create, document, exhibit, and expand the many ways the field is experienced and understood. Asian diaspora artists, Asian American artists, and artists living and working across Asia may begin from different questions, yet together they shape the ecosystem that curators, writers, museums, galleries, educators, nonprofit organizations, collectors, publications, and AAPI communities continue to build.

Contemporary Asian art is best understood as an evolving field of inquiry, shaped by the people who create it, interpret it, and contribute to it. Understanding the field is therefore less about arriving at a single definition than remaining open to the questions that continue to shape it.

About the Writer

Webson Ji is a New York–based cultural producer, nonprofit arts leader, and curator. As the Editorial Director of Asian Art Contemporary™ and Founder and Director of Li Tang Community, he focuses on contemporary Asian art, Asian diaspora cultural ecosystems, nonprofit and institutional development, public programming, and the evolving relationships between artists, institutions, and communities.