April 18, 2025 (Palo Alto, CA) - This May, to mark Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to present Reframing the Margins: Contemporary Works from AAPI Artists. The exhibition features the work of five exceptional Asian-American women and nonbinary artists: Ahn Lee, Zhang Chun Hong, Jesse Liu, Namita Paul, and gallery artist Stella Zhang. Working in a wide array of media, from ceramics to ink painting to fibers, the selected artists each respond to their heritage and identity while reflecting the diversity of perspectives and traditions within this diasporic community. Collectively, the artists’ practices explore memory and history, engaging with the layered complexities of cultural and personal experience to reimagine stories often left out of dominant narratives. The exhibition will be open to the public from May 3 – June 21st, 2025. For more information, please visit www.qualiagallery.com.Long hair, bodily textures, and ancestral architectures become recurring metaphors for change, mourning, and rebirth. Whether through Ahn Lee’s archivally-informed ceramics that imagine queer Cantonese futurisms, Zhang Chun Hong’s meditative ink renderings of hair as life force, or Jesse Liu’s surreal nocturnal mythologies of femininity and community, the artists reframe the margins as fertile ground for storytelling and reclamation. Namita Paul and Stella Zhang further expand this conversation by drawing out the emotional and physical tensions embedded in space and material — Paul through sutured canvases that mourn and mend, Zhang through soft sculptural forms that abstractly reference the female body. Together, their works create a shared space of vulnerability and strength, where the past is both honored and reimagined, and where new possibilities for belonging and visibility can emerge.

This curated group of both established and emerging artists showcases the creativity and individuality of their respective practices, while celebrating the contributions of AAPI artists to the greater discourse around contemporary art in America. Qualia Contemporary Art aims to build bridges of understanding within the local Bay Area community, promote tolerance, and foster a deeper appreciation and awareness of AAPI identities nationwide.