In collaboration with Asian American Arts Alliance (A4), we welcomed guests to attend and participate in a Town Hall, focusing on tracing histories. Town Hall is A4’s bi-monthly community gathering event.

Understanding our histories is essential work as artists and cultural producers. The AAPI community has long been interrogating and challenging their personal, familial, and cultural lineages through art and/or as part of their practice. Guests had the opportunity to learn about diverse and exciting creative arts projects and opportunities coming out of the Asian American arts community at Town Hall’s rapid-fire line-up of pitches, and met featured presenters Tommy Kha and Ambika Trasi!

This event was FREE and open to the public. RSVP was required to pitch and/or attend, but note that you do not have to pitch to attend.

About the Pitch Process
A4 Town Halls are a forum to share an upcoming project or exhibition, promote an event or opportunity, find collaborators and venues, or simply introduce yourself to the community. There are two ways to pitch at an A4 Town Hall: a two-minute pitch which requires pre-registering, and a 30-second pitch which you can sign up for at the event.

2-min pitch (the event has passed)
Sign up ahead of time for a 2-minute pitch by completing the following steps:
1. Register for a “RSVP + Pitch” ticket via Eventbrite, and
2. Complete a pitch form with details about your pitch at least 3 days before the event.

In your pitch form, you will be required to please include any images, video, or slides you would like presented during your pitch. We encourage you to share your website and social handles so that we can promote on the event page and in the slides (which we share with all attendees after the event). Slides/images will be presented in the order in which they are uploaded. If you would like to ensure your slides/images appear in the correct order, please number them.

A4 Staff will be compiling and driving the master slideshow. Presenters will not be able to use their devices to present.

30-sec pitch
After the featured presentations and 2-minute pitches, we invite anyone from the audience to provide a 30-sec pitch. This requires signing up at the event via an online form we provide.

About Tommy Kha
Tommy Kha (b. Memphis, Tennessee) received his Photography MFA from Yale University. He is the recipient of the CPW Vision Award, Next Step Award, Foam Talent, Creator Labs Photo’ Fund, NYSCA/NYFA Photography Fellow, and a former resident at Light Work, the Camera Club of New York, Silver Arts, and the International Studios and Curatorial Program. He was one of 47 artists in the inaugural Silver List.

His work has been published in The New York Times, New Yorker, Foam, Dazed, Interview, McSweeney’s, Harper’s Magazine, Pitchfork, ArtForum, Hyperallergic, Butt Magazine, Miranda July’s “We Think Alone,” and Vice.

He’s been included in museum group shows at Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), the High Museum (Atlanta), Leslie-Lohman Museum (NYC), and mostly recently, participating in the inaugural Tennessee Triennial at the Brooks Museum (Memphis). He has had solo shows at Higher Pictures Generation (NYC), Baxter St. at the Camera Club of New York (NYC), and Blue Sky Gallery (Portland), and presented, through Vasli Souza Gallery, at Paris Photo’s Curiosa section curated by Holly Roussell, as well as participating in the Hyères Festival and Unseen Festival. Other exhibitions include Billboard Creative (Los Angeles), Nathalie Karg Gallery (NYC), Launch F18 (NYC), Teen Party (NYC), and Yongkang Lu Art (Shanghai). He lives and works between New York City and Memphis.

About Ambika Trasi
Ambika Trasi is an artist, curator, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her interdisciplinary research-based practice considers the coloniality of power within images and sites. She is interested in the roles that memory, language, and technology play in identity-making, community-building, and unlearning.

Trasi has exhibited recently at Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia and Heroes Gallery, New York; she has presented lecture-performances at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and HANGAR – Centro de Investigação Artística, Lisbon. Her curatorial projects include Salman Toor: How Will I Know, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; A Space for Monsters, featuring works by Maryam Hoseini, Kaveri Raina, and Anjuli Rathod at Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia; and Maya Varadaraj’s second solo exhibition in New York, No Feeling is Final, opening on August 3, 2023 at Aicon Contemporary. Trasi’s writing has been published by the Whitney Museum of American Art; IBRAAZ Journal for Contemporary Visual Culture in North Africa and the Middle East; and Arcade Project Zine. She holds a B.F.A. from New York University with a minor in South Asian studies.

About Asian American Arts Alliance
The Asian American Arts Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring greater representation, equity, and opportunities for Asian American artists and cultural organizations through resource sharing, promotion, and community building.

About A4’s Town Hall
Town Hall is A4’s bi-monthly community gathering event that features presentations, pitches, and power networking! We welcome artists of all disciplines, as well as arts organizations, to pitch upcoming projects, find collaborators, or discover new opportunities in a lively space.

To keep everyone safe and healthy, if you are not feeling well or have been exposed to COVID-19, please stay home. We will provide masks.

Two-minute pitches:

Hannah Miao
Chinatown Photo Album
IG: @chinatownphotoalbum

Laura Lizcano
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Website: www.lmcc.net
IG: @lmcc_nyc

Sammy Yuen
Sharing Lines
Website: www.sammyyuen.com
IG: @sammynycart

Andy Lee
Asian American Film Lab, Inc.
Website: www.film-lab.org
IG: @AsAmFilmLab

Kathy Liu
Asian Cultural Council
Website: www.asianculturalcouncil.org
IG: @asianculturalcouncil

Tang Tian
Website: www.tianvideo.com
IG: @tian_tang_

Dongshin Chang
Website: www.kunqusociety.org

Lily Huang-Voronina
Mother Tongue Media
IG: @mothertonguemedia

Shirley Chen
Chinatown, My Chinatown
IG: @surelyimshirley

Jiaying Zhang
Website: www.jiayingzhang.com
IG: @ericaaaaa33

Eriko Tsogo
Mongolian Cultural and Heritage Center of Colorado
Website: www.erikotsogo.com
IG: @erikotsogo

30-sec pitches:

Ariel Urim Chung
The Kitchen Project
Website: www.kitchen.arielurimchung.com
IG: @a_real_a_riel

Rishabh Aggarwal
IG: @workinprogressnyc

Shannon Yu
Website: www.shannonyu.smugmug.com
IG: @hsiangru.yu