Perimeter: We Live Here Now presents the work of Asian artists born and raised outside the United States who have since immigrated and now reside in Oregon. Organized by the Art Gym, this multi-venue exhibit is currently being shown at four community college galleries in the Portland metropolitan area. The show touches on various emotions and episodes of different individuals making their new homes in a foreign country. Themes include the process of immigration, cultural experiences and the attempted resolution of new lives.

Sang-ah Choi’s Welcome to America depicts herself and her husband set among the overwhelming stimulus of a pop-culture environment. Within the cartoon-like world, the figures are ghostly rendered as pilgrims being greeted by Mickey and Minnie Mouse in a fast-paced urban environment populated by objects of consumerism, signs and logos from major corporate chains. Motoya Nakamura’s photographic images are more documentary in nature. Referring to the childhood experiences of his two sons as they navigate their dual culture, the series Being Pulled expresses the feeling of being suspended between cultural identities.

Horatio Law’s dual-channel projection, Caught Between the Stripes, allows visitors to walk in front of the projections and create shadows or otherwise obscure full colour and grayscale imagery of a large American flag flapping in the wind. Akihiko Miyoshi’s work also deals with the space between cultures by using a photographer’s gray card as a symbol for considering grey areas in life. Videos by Ying Tan provide a more local sense of living in the Pacific Northwest. Rain: A Visual Quartet shows images of rain running down a window and in a landscape, while Ebb and Flow resembles the flow of Chinese brush painting.

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Allyn Cantor