Moon Gazing: A Call to Ancestors

This September, millions of people around the world will celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival by gathering with family, eating sweet treats such as moon cakes, and remembering loved ones. ‘Moon Gazing: A Call to Ancestors,’ is a group exhibition designed to bring ancestral heritage into conversation with the present. Inspired by the work of the late painter, printmaker, and professor Chen Lok Lee (1927 – 2020), Romana Lee-Akiyama, Lee’s daughter, curated this exhibition to explore contemporary expressions of identity for Asian and Asian American artists connected to Philadelphia, as well as the tensions that underrepresented and systemically excluded artists with hyphenated identities face.

Lee-Akiyama is the founding director and curator of the Chen Lok Lee Legacy Project, which she established in March 2021 as a homage to her late father whom she lost to COVID. Since launching the Chen Lok Lee Legacy Project, Romana has curated four exhibits in Philadelphia, centering themes of immigration, belonging, anti-Asian hate and violence, and what it means to create “home” for marginalized populations. Chen Lok Lee developed his art over more than 50 years across three continents. Other exhibiting artists: Chenlin Cai, Hanzi, Mel Hsu, Gina Kim, Michelle Myers, Winnie Sidhartha, Hanalee Akiyama, Joon Thomas and Kumaji “Harry” Nakatsugawa.