"Incurable Nostalgia" is a multimedia project, including a 16mm film loop installation, videos, drawings, and sculpture which artist Nung-Hsin Hu (胡農欣) created during her 3-month long residency (September 1 – November 29, 2020) at the 18th Street Arts Center. The exhibition, held at Atrium Gallery, 18th Street Arts Center's Olympic Campus (1639 18th Street, Santa Monica) from November 18 till January 22 of 2021, also includes a virtual dinner on December 3rd, with several curators from Queens Museum of New York invited to speak at the event. Those interested are welcomed to register and participate.
Nung-Hsin Hu's residency and project received support from the Taiwan Academy of Los Angeles and the Ministry of Culture. Through "Incurable Nostalgia," she reflects on the loss of her childhood home, and the processes of rethinking and searching for the meaning of "home." Hu takes inspiration from the The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, which describes how Modern Nostalgia has transformed from being a curable disease in the 17th century, then going beyond individual psychology and eventually becoming a public epidemic, mourning for an impossible return.
Hu's "Incurable Nostalgia" explores the way in which we experience collective grief, long for the world we knew and the normality that we may never return to under the current pandemic era. Moreover, how the months-long lockdown, stay-at-home orders, climate crises, and travel restrictions have shifted our notion of home and altered the relationship between our body and space. Incurable Nostalgia will also include site-specific performative elements where the artist will utilize her temporary "home," the studio space and new surroundings, to create multimedia work juxtaposing the past and present, dreams and everyday life representing her processes of adaptation.
The exhibition will include Incurable Nostalgia, a virtual dinner conversation between Nung-Hsin Hu, Hitomi Iwasaki (Director of Exhibitions and Programs at the Queens Museum), Jessica Kairé (Artist and Co-founder of NuMu), and Frida Cano (Assistant Curator / Artist Residency Coordinator at 18th Street Arts Center) on Thursday, December 3rd, 2020 at 5 PM PST/ 8 PM EST/ 9 AM Taiwan.
For more information and make an appointment, please go here: the exhibition and virtual dinner conversation.
Nung-Hsin Hu was born in Taiwan. She received her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Long Island and has engaged in creative visual arts and art administration work in the U.S. Her expertise spans a wide range of disciplines, media and forms of expression. She interweaves video, sculpture, performance, and installation in her practice, highlighting the different themes and ideals of her work. Life in foreign countries and residencies in different cities allow her work to reflect the internal monologue she has with the external environment, contacts with different cultures as well as her profuse observation and meditation on the society and nature surrounding her. Moreover, she uses visual language to present ideas and phenomena that are too often neglected. Her most recent creative project mainly uses a 16mm film loop installation to explore themes such as time and memory. This work has been exhibited in New York, France, Buenos Aires, and Hong Kong.