Meet the Artists Featured in This Year's Silent Art Auction
Theater Mu is honored to feature the beautiful and diverse work of 20 incredibly talented Asian American artists at our upcoming Mu family reunion. These local and national artists have donated jewelry, apparel, children's books, portraits, paintings and more which celebrate the entire Asian American diaspora. We host this art auction as a declaration of Asian joy and an expression of Asian creativity after a year of anti-Asian violence.
Martin and Rich Lee
The Other Ones by Lee is a daily collaborative parody by the Brothers Lee focusing on issues of ‘otherness.’
Bao Phi
Bao Phi is a spoken word artist, published poet, children's book author, nonprofit arts administrator, and father.
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American writer. Her work focuses on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production. Her plays have been presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Theater Mu, and Theater Unbound. She’s a Playwrights’ Center and Theater Mu fellow in playwriting, a Loft Literary Center fellow in poetry (2018) and children's literature (2019), a Twin Cities Media Alliance fellow in public art, and an Aspen Ideas Bush Foundation fellow. She's received grants from the Jerome Foundation, Bush Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Forecast Public Art, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, MN State Arts Board, and elsewhere. Her work has been mentioned by the NY Times, Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, MN Original, Minnesota Public Radio, and more. She holds a Master in Liberal Studies degree and co-hosted a podcast on Minnesota Public Radio.
Ung Lee
Ung Lee is an 88 year old first-generation Korean American visual artist. He immigrated from Korea in 1964 and lived in Connecticut for over 50 years until moving to Minneapolis to live with his son's family. During the pandemic, Ung completed over 100 pencil on acrylic portraits of famous world citizens. He uses oils, acrylic, ink, and pencil on canvas, paper, and wood to draw Korean landscapes, portraits, and everyday life scenes. His art is inspired by memories of Korea before the war that divided the country.
Teeko + Co
Launched in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020, Teeko + Co. is driven by a one-woman team with a thirst for curiosity, and a passion for making. Our mission is to help support a positive community that celebrates authenticity, femininity and diversity. We strive to bring designs that unique and allergy free.
Yen Chee
Yen Chee designs are a modern and sophisticated collection of hand-crafted jewelry. Comprised of high-quality materials like sterling silver, 14k gold-fill, 14k gold, quartz, onyx, and other high-vibrational stones, these contemporary works of art are distinct in design and embody the spiritual essence of beauty and harmony. All the jewelry is created in small batches by Yen in her jewelry studio in Minneapolis, MN, and infused with love and the most positive intentions.
Manola Suvannarad
Bags and soft goods made by Manola Suvannarad in South Minneapolis
Thai Phan-Quang
Thaiphy is a father, a husband and a photographer who has been covering the social justice movement in the Twin Cities for the past 6 years.
Instagram: @thaiphypq
Tou Yia Xiong
Tou Yia Xiong is an illustrator and graphic designer who has a holistic approach to design. He has experience in product design, UI, print, and mobile development. His versatility allows him to make connections across multiple disciplines, making great results for clients and the end customers. He has designed award-winning and best-selling toys for The Manhattan Toy Company. One acclaimed toy design of his is the Tree Top Adventure. His designs can be found at Anthropologie, Crate&Kids, MoMA, Target, Maisonette, and many more retailers. Furthermore, he has worked with clients like Adobe, Walker Art Center, Pollen Midwest, and Optum.
Azania Tripp
Azania Tripp is a Black/Singaporean Eurasian woman born in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She is a multi-media collage artist and social worker. Through ObsidianPause, she designs lightweight multi-media collage earrings, apparel, and accessories. Her work represents the pursuit of joy and healing through the reality of navigating intergenerational racialized trauma. She started ObsidianPause in 2015 in Bedstuy Brooklyn NYC. ObsidianPause designs show love, validation, boundary setting, beauty, representation of BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ people, and Afrofuturism. In 2019, Azania received a Central Minnesota Art Individual Artist Grant to provide collage earrings workshops for community members to design their own collage earrings and pins. Azania has sold her work at art fairs and online. Each piece is a work of art and is unique and exclusively one of a kind.
Gita Ghei
I am self-taught metal sculptor. With my art I celebrate natural resources as life sustaining forces. I use reversible and recyclable metal, solar energy, sunlight and electric, plants and sugar. In my projects with art learners, I stress themes of strength in diversity and stewardship. I wish to provide a place to imagine a sustainable balance between human and non-human.
Mo Chen
陈默 Mo Chen is a painter and curator living in Chicago. Her work takes inspiration from Chinese landscape and is about abstracted metaphoric space in various forms. She has been exhibited and collected internationally since 2013. Chen is currently teaching at SAIC. She is also the exhibition director of the Research House for Asian Art (RHAA) at Chicago, the curator of the Zhou B Art Center at Chicago, and a contributing writer for National Art magazine at Shanghai China.
Shun Yong
Shun Jie Yong is a portrait photographer who documents immigrants and refugees in the United States and Malaysia. Shun is a second-generation Chinese immigrant from Malaysia and also a resident alien in the United States. Shun received his MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has been living in Minnesota for ten years and is still adapting to life in America. Shun has exhibited at Art at 801 Gallery, Squirrel Haus Arts, Open Eye Theater, and New Rules. Shun is the co-founder of CarryOn Homes project, which has collaborated with institutions such as Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Walker Art Center to bridge the gap between immigrant communities and museums by designing activities that engage with the public. Shun's main project - “Occupations", he documents the personal stories of ordinary immigrants and refugees, to honor them and give them visibility in their new homeland. His investigative portraiture allows him to understand how immigrants and refugees fit into contemporary society and contribute to those new places that they call home. By engaging with these subjects, he discovered his own role and identity in the United States and his country of origin, Malaysia.
Sun Yung Shin
신 선 영 辛善英 Sun Yung Shin, the designer behind Tyger Tyger Jewelry, is a Korean-born writer whose fourth book of poems, The Wet Hex, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2022. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, BOMB magazine, the 2021 Gwangju Biennale, and in many anthologies, journals, and installations. She received her MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from Naropa University. Her work has won an Asian American Literary Award and a Minnesota Book Award, and she has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, the Archibald Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and elsewhere. She is the editor of three prose anthologies: What We Hunger For: Refugee & Immigrant Stories about Food & Family; A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota; and Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption; as well as the author/co-author of two books for children. With Su Hwang she co-directs Poetry Asylum in Minneapolis.
Cori Lin
I am a midwest-based Japanese/Taiwanese American illustrator and designer specializing in movement art and culture-centered storytelling. By visualizing narratives and illuminating concepts, I make art that fuels action.
Nancy XiáoRong Valentine
Nancy XiáoRong Valentine is a self-taught artist from Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Though often referred to as “the creative kid” throughout her lifetime, it wasn’t until 2016 that she officially launched her creative career as a visual artist. With natural artistic inclination, self-determination and children’s craft-quality watercolor supplies as the only tools in her bag, Valentine signed a lease with the Kaddatz Artist Lofts and began to pursue painting. In the spring of 2017, Valentine was awarded a Career Development Grant from the Lakes Region Arts Council which allowed her the means to acquire professional grade materials and the freedom to create with conviction. Conceived as the second child of a family residing in Lanzhou, Gansu during the era of China's 'One Child Policy,' Nancy's mother and elder brother emigrated to rural western Minnesota to allow her the opportunity of life. Valentine uses her artistry as a way of deepening her connection to her Chinese culture in an intimate and vulnerable way. She draws technical inspiration from her Chinese heritage and focuses on abstract themes of beauty, hope, identity and resilience. Valentine is known for her visual storytelling and organic impressionistic linework using watercolor, gouache, Chinese and India inks on rice papers.
Kari Lee
Maker, illustrator, and full-time mom to English bulldog Leroy, Kari Lee creates mini pieces of art focused on all things cute and fun.
Instagram: @karileeart
Chris Chookiatsirichai
Chrissy Chook Concoctions is a jewelry collection made by Chris Chookiatsirichai in South Minneapolis and is born out of a synthesis of cultural study, jewelry traditions, self-adornment and a love for collecting interesting objects. Inspired by color and patterns found in the natural world, antique textiles and pottery of nomadic people, her work integrates antique trade beads, semi-precious stone, organic material, vintage glass, mixed ethnic metals, oxidized silver, leather and fiber to make up her creations. Through many years of working in the bead trade, she has connected with various friends and families’ companies from numerous cultures, providing an opportunity to source materials that are fair-trade/fair wage and cottage industry based. Chris enjoys sharing information about the worldwide phenomenon of beads and detailing some of their stories on the backdrop of each jewelry tag. Her work can be found in person at Mill City Farmers Market and Gallery 360, a fabulous women-owned and run local art gallery.
Kao Kalia Yang
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer. She is the author of the memoirs The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang is also the author of the children’s books A Map Into the World, The Shared Room, The Most Beautiful Thing, and Yang Warriors. She co-edited the ground-breaking collection What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and garnered four Minnesota Book Awards. Kao Kalia Yang lives in Minnesota with her family and teaches and speaks across the nation.