Behind the Eclipse: Installation + Artist Talk

12:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. in the Media Lab

Please inquire at the front desk to attend the artist talk at 3:00 p.m.

The films in this installation, organized by guest curator and artist Alexandra Kumala, display kaleidoscopic perspectives representing the intricate complexities that underlie Southeast Asia. Through experimental storytelling, these films explore themes of returning to ancestral homes, untranslatability and the lack of a common language in the region, retracing the histories that have been buried or blurred by dominant narratives, and honoring the memories lost to displacement and erasure. These films reveal the experiences of hybrid identities forced into boxes of ethnicity or nationality, and the reckoning of one’s belonging in relation to one’s place in the world, whether by choice, by chance, or by force.  

Behind the Eclipse will feature a continuous 21-minute screening on loop of:  

Street Artefacts
Min Ma Naing, 2021, 1 min.   

Viet-Lao
Thi My Lien Nguyen, 2016, 4 mins. 

20 Years and Other Untranslatabilities
Alexandra Kumala, 2023, 9 mins. 

The Mountain That Hid
Sim Chi Yin, 2022, 6 mins. 

les misérables
Nay Saysourinho, 2021, 1 min

Mom what did you hear
Nay Saysourinho, 2021, 32 secs. 

At 3:00 p.m., there will be a discussion in the Fox Amphitheater with artist Nay Saysourinho, moderated by writer-curator Danielle Wu. 

Danielle Wu is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently Communications & Database Manager at Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) and was previously a Digital Fellow at Democracy Now! Her reviews have been published inArt in America, Artforum, Frieze Magazine, The Offing, among other publications. Notable curatorial projects include Just Between Us: From the Archives of Arlan Huang with Howie Chen at Pearl River Mart, New York (2023); Water Works at International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2022); and Ghost in the Ghost with scholar Anne Anlin Cheng at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York (2019). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, ArtNews, South China Morning Post, WNYC, and other media outlets. 

This program is made possible, in part, with public funds from the Queens Arts Fund, a regrant program supported by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by New York Foundation for the Arts.