How Blue Behind the Moon?
Somewhere in the silence, a presence lingers. Not a voice, not a story, just the trace of something that once tried to be seen
An Exhibition By:
Sayako Hiroi, Yining Lee, Seirim Yoon, and Anguo Ping
March 6 - 22, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, 2026, 6 - 8 PM
How Blue Behind the Moon?”
Somewhere in the silence, a presence lingers. Not a voice, not a story, just the trace of something that once tried to be seen.
This group exhibition brings together four female artists—Sayako Hiroi, Yining Lee, Seirim Yoon, and Anguo Ping—each from a different East Asian country, whose practices center on what is often overlooked, unspeakable, or unresolved. Rather than offering clear narratives or fixed meanings, their works explore ambiguity as a form of care—a way to remain present with complexity, absence, and emotional residue.
Each artist engages with memory, language, or silence in a distinct way. Hiroi’s paintings trace what the Japanese call kéhai: a lingering presence of what cannot be said. Recent works reflect on the silent women of bijin-ga, ukiyo-e prints that depicted them without voice. Lee’s paintings and ceramics capture quiet moments of migration and solitude, often shaped by her experience of living between Taiwan and the United States. Using muted palettes and symbolic imagery. Yoon visualizes memory as a fractured, layered terrain, using vibrant color and brushwork to depict what remains after recognition fades. Ping merges asemic writing with fragmented images, evoking the anxiety of existence.
Their materials—oil on canvas, acrylic on linen and curved wood panels, acrylic gouache on panel, ceramic sculpture, and calligraphic marks—become tools not for defining meaning, but for holding space. Some works seem almost legible, just about to form a figure or sentence, then retreat. Others offer environments of disorientation and fragmentation, inviting the viewer to pause rather than resolve.
Across the exhibition, the viewer is not asked to decode, but to dwell in uncertainty to sense what lingers in the in-between: between image and abstraction, between what is remembered and what is forgotten, between gesture and voice.
At its core, How Blue Behind the Moon? , is a meditation on how we relate to what cannot be finalized, how we stay with silences, misreadings, and the traces left by others. It invites audiences into a shared space of vulnerability, where ambiguity becomes not confusion, but intimacy.
The exhibition will feature approximately 20–25 works installed across Piano Craft Gallery’s main and side walls. Formats will include small-to-large paintings on canvas and wood, ceramic objects, and text-based imagery. To foster community engagement, we plan to include an interactive reflection wall inviting visitors to contribute fragments of their own unspoken memories or moments of ambiguity. We may also offer a therapeutic, art-based workshop for local participants to explore personal memories that have remained unseen or unspoken.
This exhibition aligns with Piano Craft Gallery’s mission to support experimental, thoughtful, and socially engaged practices. In a time when so much demands clarity and resolution, How Blue Behind the Moon? creates space for the opposite: to listen, to stay, and to feel without owning.
In the aftermath of global displacement, rising anti-Asian sentiment, and ongoing pressure to explain or justify one’s identity, How Blue Behind the Moon? offers a space not to resolve, but to remain with what cannot be resolved.
It affirms the quiet power of presence in a world that often values loud voices and quick answers. This kind of presence resonates more deeply and stays longer. Now is the time to listen more carefully, not for solutions, but for traces.
