AAAinA is excited to host curator Danni Shen and artists Cole Lu and AYDO (Ayoung Yu and Nicholas Oh) on Friday, December 4th for a presentation and conversation. The evening will focus on research and themes related to the current exhibition Knowledge Is Myth: Chimeric Continuities hosted by the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning with a lecture by Shen, the program will culminate in a larger conversation with Lu and AYDO. 

Knowledge Is Myth: Chimeric Continuities features works by four artists and collectives Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien, Candice Lin, Cole Lu, and AYDO (Ayoung Yu & Nicholas Oh) that complicate the binaries of mythology and knowledge, and their constructs. The title Knowledge Is Myth plays off the phrase “knowledge is power,” popularized by Sir Francis Bacon in the late sixteenth century at the height of the European Enlightenment, globalization, and religious conflict. Drawing from diasporic as well as chimeric and hybrid subjectivities, these works reconfigure colonial hierarchies of being that separate human and nonhuman realms, while embracing what decolonial writers Walter Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh describe as an ecology of knowledge informed by non-Western epistemologies, carried through myths and the power of storytelling.

Please find more information on the exhibition here.

Registration through our Eventbrite portal is required for all AAAinA programming. Suggested donation is $5. The minimum required donation is $1. Light refreshments will be provided. Programs begin promptly, so please arrive 5-10 minutes early.

Danni Shen is a curator and writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is currently Assistant Curator at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. Recent exhibitions include Knowledge is Myth: Chimeric Continuities and Cosmos Falling. Previous curatorial roles include at The Kitchen, Empty Gallery HK, and Wave Hill in New York. She has been a visiting critic at Tufts SMFA, RISD, NYU-ITP, and Cornell AAP, and was also Critic-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), as well as Curator-in-Residence at Residency Unlimited. Shen is a contributor to various publications including BOMB Magazine, Art in America, Heichi Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Rhizome, AICA Magazine, and the Boston Art Review among others. 

Cole Lu (b. Taipei, Taiwan) is an artist and writer based in New York. Across sculpture, installation, drawing, and writing, he reworks mythology, literary narratives, and archival imagery through material transformation, tracing memory, displacement, survival, and the systems through which histories become legible. His work is currently included in Knowledge Is Myth: Chimeric Continuities at the Carpenter Center, Harvard University (2026). Solo presentations include The Engineers at Bangkok Art Biennale (2024), Amnesia at Herald St, London (2024), Stoicheion at ICA at MECA&D (2024), and Smells Like Content at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2015). Other exhibitions include ICA Philadelphia, The Drawing Center, Aranya Art Center, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He has collaborated on projects with Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Ballroom Marfa. His writing has appeared with Montez Press and Coffee House Press, and his book First Pylon was published by Inpatient Press (2023).

AYDO was founded in 2020 by artists A young Yu and Nicholas Oh in New York. Yu received her MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Oh received his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and BA from San Francisco State University. The duo combines their respective expertise in performance, video, ceramic sculpture, and site-specific installation to form their collaborative practice. AYDO has exhibited and performed at venues including:  the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University; The Pacific Asia Museum, University of Southern California, CA; Bauhaus Museum Weimar, Germany; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, The Netherlands; The Shed, NY; Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; Apex Art, NY; Cantor Art Center, Stanford University, CA; Museum of Art and Design, NY; Christie’s Inc, NY; Canal Projects, NY; Hub-Robeson Gallery, Penn State University, PA; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, NY; ChaShaMa, NY; Artist Alliance, NY; AHL Foundation, NY; Fashion Institute of Technology, NY; The Immigrant Artist Biennial, NY; among others. AYDO has been awarded artist residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Art Omi, Skaftfell Art Center, Recess Art, Sculpture Space, Catwalk Institute, and Dongguk University (South Korea). 

The event is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, and other foundations and individuals.