Twilight Child: Antonia Kuo and Martin Wong
June 15 - September 15, 2024
Twilight Child brings together the work of Antonia Kuo (born 1987, New York) and Martin Wong (born 1946, Portland, Oregon; died 1999, San Francisco), two queer, diasporic Chinese artists born more than forty years apart. This cross-generational study in personal and artistic resonance illuminates the nuanced ways artists converse across time and place. Developed in close collaboration with Kuo, Twilight Child features Wong’s rarely exhibited biomorphic clay sculptures from the 1960s and ’70s alongside selected paintings and archival materials from throughout his career. Kuo contributes recent photochemical paintings—including a new work created in response to Wong’s poetry—and sculptural objects made at her family’s Seattle-area industrial metal casting company.
In their works, both artists combine the influences of their Chinese heritage with their contemporary American realities and elements of fantasy. They each incorporate photography in unconventional ways, to stylistically divergent but conceptually related ends. Wong collaged photographs to compose his trompe l’oeil New York nightscapes of the 1980s, adding constellations and ASL fingerspelling to create dense compositions filled with coded languages. Kuo likewise achieves a densely patterned, shallow depth of field by superimposing photographs, masking, and painting gesturally with reactive chemicals on light-sensitive paper. Through their respective techniques, the artists underscore processes of translation and confound “straight” legibility.
The layering and hybridity present in these works suggest the pluralism of multicultural experience as well as a desire to integrate dualities such as chaos and control. For Kuo, this approach reflects a simultaneous interest in and ambivalence toward expressing cultural identity, “a confusion that can be productive to mine, an element of self that is both familiar and distant.”
Twilight Child: Antonia Kuo and Martin Wong is organized by Amanda Donnan, former Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions, with Georgia Erger, Curator.
Generous support provided by 4Culture and Frye Members. Media sponsorship provided by Cascade PBS.
Installation view of Twilight Child: Antonia Kuo and Martin Wong, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, June 15–September 15, 2024. Photo: Jueqian Fang
Martin Wong. A-One, 1984. Acrylic on canvas. 48 x 60 in. Courtesy New Museum. Copyright Martin Wong Foundation. Image courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P·P·O·W, New York
Antonia Kuo. Oculus, 2022. Unique chemical painting on light-sensitive silver gelatin paper mounted on aluminum in welded aluminum frame. 70 7/8 x 56 1/8 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY, New York
Installation view of Twilight Child: Antonia Kuo and Martin Wong, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, June 15–September 15, 2024. Photo: Jueqian Fang
Left: Martin Wong. Untitled (Spine Spiral), ca. 1970–71. Stoneware. 15 x 11 3/4 x 3 in. Copyright Martin Wong Foundation. Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P·P·O·W, New York
Right: Martin Wong. Untitled (MW Was Here January 23 1970), 1970. Stoneware. 16 x 7 x 12 in. Copyright Martin Wong Foundation. Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P·P·O·W, New York
Antonia Kuo. Behemoth (diptych), 2022. Unique chemical painting on light-sensitive silver gelatin paper on wood panel in welded aluminum frame. 93 x 81 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY, New York
Installation view of Twilight Child: Antonia Kuo and Martin Wong, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, June 15–September 15, 2024. Photo: Jueqian Fang
Martin Wong. Everything Must Go, 1983. Acrylic on canvas. 48 x 60 in. Collection of Steven Johnson and Walter Sudol, Courtesy of Second Ward Foundation. Copyright Martin Wong Foundation. Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P·P·O·W, New York
Left: Antonia Kuo. Guardian, 2017. Ceramic. 22 x 12 x 15 in. Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY. Photo: Charles Benton
Right: Antonia Kuo. Osiris, 2023. Cast bronze, ceramic. 16 1/2 x 11 1/2 x 6 3/4 in. Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY, New York
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