The art pieces and exhibitions I love have either moved me or shaped my aesthetic taste. Listed in descending chronological order of when I discovered them, my favorite art pieces and exhibitions are:
2025: The Fisherman’s Daughter, by Yip Cheong Fun
National Gallery Singapore, Singapore.
A haunting and surreal but equally beautiful photograph. From the curator’s helpful note at the National Gallery Singapore, “[this photograph reflects] the influence of Pictorialism—a photographic movement that emphasized aesthetic effect over the documentation of reality. […] These careful stagings of subject, composition, and framing create evocative and romanticized scenes of Singapore.”
2024: Zzz 09-04, by Lin Chien-Jung
Taiwan Design Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.
An unexpected piece of art on a window sill of the Taiwan Design Museum’s ticket office in Taipei. I remember my reaction when I noticed it: I wanted to sit next to it and ask how it was doing. The sculpture looked cute at first, but when I realized it was tucked away in the window corner and that it was the only artwork in this long, nondescript hallway, my heart melted.
2024: Various artwork
Pintô Art Museum, Antipolo, Philippines.
The most impressive art space I have ever seen. Lush and colorful gardens contrasted with bizarre, provocative, and often outrageously funny contemporary Filipino art. The curation is unpretentious and playful, which makes the artwork enjoyable and not too heady. My favorite pieces were Future violence no. 1 by Costantino Zicarelli, God Bless Pilipinas by Jojit Solano, and Hollow Man by Alab Pagarigan.
2023: Quantum Cloud VIII, by Antony Gormley
SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA.
Chaotic motion beautifully captured in a highly ordered sculpture. I love that Gormley’s piece evokes, for me at least, an image of something hyper-futuristic forming (a cyborg? a robot?), almost as if the process of the figure’s assembly got frozen in time. To this day, I am not sure why I am enamored by this piece; maybe because it highlights the self-organizing nature of the world around us?
2022: Museu do homem do nordeste, by Jonathas de Andrade
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
In his installation “Museu de homem do nordeste,” de Andrade portrayed working-class men from Recife, his hometown in Brazil, whom he recruited via newspaper ads. I found the photos really striking because they challenged the concept of masculinity in the context of more traditional Brazilian culture by giving these men more feminine erotic energy. At the same time, it also challenged my concept of glamour, encouraging me to admire the high-end aesthetics of something that in the commercial Western culture would never been seen as glamorous: regular, working-class men.
2022: World Press Photo Exhibition, curated by World Press Photo Contest
De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, NL.
The first photo, “San Isidro Settlement Eviction,” by Vladimir Encina, shows a heartbreaking moment between a couple who are separated by the police during evictions from the San Isidro settlement in Colombia. Seeing this one in large-scale format at the World Press Photo Exhibition moved me to tears.
The second photo, “People Who Feed the United States,” a photo by Ismail Ferdous, shows José, a meatpacking-industry worker, sitting with his sister Sara in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Because this industry was determined to be essential in the COVID-19 pandemic, José like many of the workers in this industry, had to go to work and contracted the disease in April 2020, ending up on a ventilator for 5 months. A poignant reality of how “staying safe” during the global pandemic was possibly only for the wealthy.
2022: Geometric Opulence, curated by Sabine Schaschl
Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, Switzerland.
This was a limited and small but nonetheless beautiful exhibition, juxtaposing symbolism of opulence with highly structured and conventionally minimalist shapes. The first photo shows the Apparences Confuses installation by John Armleder, my favorite piece from this visit, showcasing six textural paintings in combination with five Mylar tinsel strips. I loved how clean-cut the overall installation felt, while containing absurdly kitsch and luxurious motifs: shells, stars, pompoms, and glitter.
The second photo showcases 8650, 4490, 5630: pieces created by Sylvie Fleury. Square mirrors were coated with Swarovski crystals, giving once again a jarring contrast of precise sophistication with trashy, consumeristic luxury. In any other format, this concentration of Swarovski crystals would look absurd, but under these geometric constraints, it somehow worked.
2022: Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy curated by Jill D’Alessandro
Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA.
Superb exhibition showcasing the extraordinary and unconventional designs by Guo Pei. Every piece could have been observed and admired for hours, but one particular ensemble stood out to me, which was perhaps her most subdued creation in the museum.
Part of her L’Architecture Collection Fall/Winter 2018-2019, a black dress resembling a lamp, with street images imprinted on it, was paired with subtle black earrings that were designed as gothic street lanterns. Overall, an exquisitely curated exhibition that proves Guo Pei is a superior couturier.
2022: 80” Great Rhombicosidodecahedron by Anthony James
Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA.
This installation was such a stunning visual experience. I really enjoyed that the inside mirrors created different depths and that the viewer had the ability to design the extent of the depth. For instance, if one views the installation at an angle in which polygons of equal number of sides (say, all squares) align, an “endless wormhole” appears. It’s a wonderful display of geometry and the beauty of precision.
2022: Collected Letters by Liu Jianhua
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA.
A beautiful and formidable installation that has to be seen in person. The artist never provided an absolute interpretation of the piece, but I saw it as a representation of both the strength and fragility of the human language. Together, letters and characters carry so much emotional and cultural meaning, and yet on their own, they mean nothing at all.
2021: Ettore e Andromaca by Giorgio de Chirico
Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
This was an accidental discovery while I was aimlessly wandering through the Kunsthaus in Zürich on a rainy summer day. What struck me the most was that I felt a bleak sense of fear and loneliness despite the fact that the painting captured a loving moment between Hector and Andromache. Even if one doesn’t know the story of Trojan War, it’s evident what de Chirico captured: a loved one leaving and facing an ominous future.
2021: Virgin Mary. Supermarkets. Popcorn. Photographs 1999 to 2020 by Miles Aldridge
Fotografiska, New York, NY.
I’ve generally had trouble connecting with exhibits at New York’s Fotografiska because of its choppy curation, but I immediately fell in love with the cinematic beauty of Miles Aldridge’s photography. I was living in New York at the time, and his style perfectly complemented the stark contrast of the city’s exquisite glamor and its underlying disconnectedness.
2020: Studio 54: Night Magic curated by Matthew Yokobosky
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY.
In addition to showcasing the stunning outfits of New York’s nightlife in its heyday, Studio 54: Night Magic exhibition provided a vicarious experience for those of us who never got to live through the nightclub’s ecstatic parties. Although they surely could never live up to the actual Studio 54, the curated rooms of the Brooklyn Museum made me feel safe, included, and celebrated — all of which I imagine its patrons felt decades ago.
2020: Intangible Forms by Shohei Fujimoto
ARTECHOUSE, New York, NY.
This was my first exhibition after COVID-19 lockdowns, so it has a very special place in my heart. Set beneath the Chelsea Market in a large boiler room with ambient background music, Fujimoto‘s laser-based installation felt particularly poignant because it reminded me of late-night introspective moments during unusual music performances, which seemed forever lost at the time. I went to see the installation twice, and both times, I enjoyed sitting in the corners and observing how differently people reacted to the forms created by the laser beams.
2020: Valledor by Forrest Myers
Art Omi, Ghent, NY.
One of the most fascinating sculptures I have ever seen. What made it so captivating was that it stood in the middle of a vast, sparsely-decorated field, and because I saw the sculpture in the midst of northeastern gloomy January, I couldn’t shake off the very sinister feeling that accompanied the winter dusk. Additionally, if seen from a particular angle on the side, the three-dimensional sculpture suddenly becomes an intersection of two-dimensional squares, imploding in its own volume.
2019: Spiders by Louise Bourgeois
SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA.
This was my first time seeing Louise Bourgeois’s spider sculptures, and I immediately fell in love with them. It was interesting reading that Bourgeois saw the spiders as a representation of industriousness and protectiveness, alluding to the strong connection with her mother, while I experienced the sculptures as a visceral metaphor for smothering and a need for escape. Unintentionally, I ended up encountering her sculptures at several other museums, and I always enjoyed re-experiencing their formidable presence.
2019: Longterm Collection of Elsworth Kelly’s work
SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA.
Contrasting colors and geometric shapes? It’s a guaranteed formula for a piece of work to become my favorite art. I’ve gone to see Kelly’s work many times at SF’s MOMA, and every time his creations filled me with joy and excitement. I often apply his juxtaposition of colors to my outfits, and it always works so well.
2019: Contemporary Muslim Fashions curated by Laura Camerlengo and Jill D’Alessandro
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.
This was truly an eye-opening experience. Living in the West, it’s so easy to get accustomed to what contemporary fashion “should” look like, and this beautiful exhibition showcased how equally glamorous modest dressing can be. It was one of the best curated exhibitions I have ever seen; the most striking moment was walking through the museum and encountering a large screen playing Mona Haydar’s “Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab)” while being surrounded by an array of stunning covered fashions.
2015: Till Lindemann by Sandor Lubbe
Zoo Magazine — No. 49, 2015, Winter Issue
On a gloomy afternoon in the midst of a miserable winter in Boston in 2015, I was reading the No. 49 Issue of the Zoo Magazine and could not take my eyes off the photo spread featuring Till Lindemann. I didn’t listen to Rammstein and therefore knew very little about Lindemann, but it was nonetheless impossible to not notice his formidable personality in these beautiful photographs. Glazed in honey, his hyper-masculine jawline and his terrifyingly muscled neck and his boxy drenched beard both terrified and mesmerized me. A stunning contrast of sweetness and hostility.
2015: Damascus Gate by Frank Stella
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
I discovered Frank Stella’s work in this wonderful museum at the peak of Switzerland’s hot and humid summer. Damascus Gate particularly stood out as a mesmerizing piece of art: hypnotic and precise, dark and light, pensive and cheerful. I would encounter his art many times in other museums and I always love how easy it is to recognize that it’s Stella, even from far away.
2015: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK.
Gothic and romantic, McQueen’s designs evoked something truly visceral in me when I saw his retrospective exhibition in London. I was always of the opinion that fashion is art, but to see the evidence of that statement in a curated space was absolutely magnificent. The most striking creation was McQueen’s black duck-feather dress, from his The Horn of Plenty Collection—experiencing the vivid imagery of both death and life through just one ensemble was breathtaking.
2015: China: Through the Looking Glass curated by Andrew Bolton
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
After a widely-publicized 2015 Met Gala, I was so excited to witness the sartorial beauty of Western and Eastern cultures coming together at this exhibition. With so much public exposure, the museum was packed and it was hard to fully immerse myself in the exquisite designs, but I still fondly remember looking at each piece and admiring Bolton’s incredible talent for curation.
2014: David Bowie curated by Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany.
I am so grateful that I got to see this exhibition while David Bowie was still alive. Wonderfully curated, from Bowie’s outlandish outfits to multimedia installations, this massive artistic undertaking successfully displayed what a major global influence Bowie has been. Personally, this was also a significant exhibition for me because I was living in Berlin for the summer and discovering its incredible anarchic culture and nightlife, which helped me understand why Bowie had such a strong connection to the city.