AAAinA and Smack Mellon are thrilled to announce a collaborative program featuring curator and writer Pallavi Surana and artists Maia Chao and S Emsaki. This conversation will focus on Surana’s current exhibition at Smack Mellon, titled Remains to be seen, which features works by Chao and Emsaki alongside seven other artists. Surana, Chao, and Emsaki will be joined by AAAinA’s Manager of Programs and Collections, Claire Kim who will moderate their conversation. This program will be hosted at Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth St. Brooklyn, NY 11201.

Remains to be seen will be on view at Smack Mellon from June 14 – July 27, 2025. The exhibition brings together nine artists whose practices probe the afterlives of waste in relation to memory, ecology, consumerism, and identity. Through sound, sculpture, video, and ritual, the artists ask how we might engage waste not only as residue, but as witness. Some works mine familial and migratory memory; others confront ecological collapse or critique capitalist excess. Their gestures are playful, mournful, and speculative. Together, they challenge linear narratives of progress and decay, proposing alternate modes of value, care, and connection.

Remains to be seen, features works by artists: Maia Chao & Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Yusuf Demirors, S. Emsaki, Sujin Lim, Jessica Maffia, Lucas Odahara, Yunfei Ren, Julia Standovar and Merry Sun.

Participant Bios:

Pallavi Surana is an arts writer and curator based in New York. ​She is currently working on projects with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and curator Cecilia Alemani. Previously, she has held positions at SculptureCenter and Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Flint, and St+India Foundation in India; as well as the Cookhouse Gallery and the Camden Arts Centre in London. Her writing has appeared in publications like Eflux Criticism, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper and Ocula, among others. Pallavi has been a visiting critic at various residencies around New York City, such as Pioneer Works, EFA Studios and NARS foundation, among others.

Maia Chao is a Philadelphia-based artist whose collaborative work spans social practice, performance, and video. She has made commissioned works for The Shed, MoMA Education, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Her projects have been presented at the RISD Museum, Bronx Museum, Oregon Contemporary, Mural Arts Philadelphia, Tufts University Art Galleries, and Boston Center for the Arts. Maia has participated in residencies at Pioneer Works, Fine Arts Work Center, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. She was a 2022-23 Pew Fellow, and is currently Public Artist in Residence at Times Square Arts. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. 

S Emsaki is an interdisciplinary artist from Isfahan, Iran, who lives and works bicoastally in the United States. Emsaki’s practice ranges from video to printing processes, in-situ drawings, and archival interventions to address the material, historical, and ecological narratives of human and non-human petro-subjects. Emsaki is the 2024–25 recipient of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program and a recent alum of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. They earned an MFA from Yale University and a BA from UC Berkeley, where they were selected for the Wendy Sussman Award and the Eisner Prize. Emsaki’s work has been exhibited and screened at Ashkal Alwan’s aashra Programming, Beirut, Lebanon; the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, CA; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA; Westbeth Gallery, NY; and Gallatin Galleries, New York University. They’ve attended fellowships and residencies at Yaddo Corporation, NY; the Fine Arts Work Center, MA; The Atlantic Center for the Arts, FL; the ICA, and the Paul Mellon Center in London, UK.

Smack Mellon is a nonprofit arts organization located in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Smack Mellon’s mission is to nurture and support emerging, under-recognized mid-career, and women artists in the creation and exhibition of new work by providing exhibition opportunities, studio workspace, and access to equipment and technical assistance for the realization of ambitious projects. We see ourselves as a vehicle whereby under-represented artists can create, explore, and exhibit their creative ideas outside the concerns of the commercial art world, offering many artists the exposure and recognition they deserve.

AAAinA’s general programming and operations are funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Vilcek Foundation, and other foundations and individuals.