What’s the Story? Contemporary Narratives of Home, Identity and Connection features Pacific Northwest artists whose work tells stories through the human figure. Bringing together six distinct perspectives on heritage, history, migration, and personal experience, the exhibition explores how artists use the figure to examine identity, belonging, and our relationships to home and place. Through visual storytelling, the artists highlight the power of art to preserve memory, reclaim histories, and shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us.
Eric Chan’s highly detailed oil paintings on reclaimed wood center marginalized subjects and queer perspectives. His artwork embraces an unorthodox combination of traditional Asian, Classical Western, and contemporary American visual elements, creating a kind of dynamic, intersectional folklore of the immigrant experience. Chan was the recipient of the Neddy Award Grand Prize in Painting in 2024, among other honors.
Al-Baseer Holly’s dynamic painting practice draws on influences ranging from his childhood in Philadelphia and his life as a rapper and recording artist in Los Angeles to a deep engagement with art history. His current body of work combines photographs of himself, family, and friends, printed on canvas and meticulously collaged into richly painted compositions that weave together memory, identity, and lived experience.
Lauren Iida creates artworks and installations using intricately hand-cut paper, often incorporating layers of ink-washed paper and focusing on negative space and shadow play. Iida’s recent work focuses on connecting the themes of her family’s Japanese heritage and WWII incarceration with contemporary social/political issues.
Vincent Keele’s colorful paintings aim to explore and re-tell Black history, bringing back phenomenal people and places, both historical and imagined, that have been misplaced, forgotten or unknown. The act of picturing and remembering is vital, to Keele, to keep history alive and ignite curiosity in others.
Gerardo Peña, a.k.a. Periko the Artist, left his career in business for the arts when he felt compelled, as an immigrant and DACA recipient, to use art to talk about identity and the immigrant experience. His surrealistic paintings explore cultural dissonance and the anxiety of not belonging.
Samantha Yun Wall’s work is characterized by her unique approach to traditional drawing techniques combined with contemporary vernacular. Her drawings embody the experience of navigating multiracial and transcultural identity. Wall’s Betty Bowen Award solo show, What We Leave Behind, is currently on view at Seattle Art Museum.
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