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Maggie Wong

@memaggiemei

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Artist | Educator

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LONG overdue proof of one of the most meaningful shows I got to be a part of in 2025.

hope of suggestion
@deiner.info
5.18 - 7.12.2025

My works:
Grounding Cord, 2025
Cast and soldered pewter
3.5” x 3.5” x 9’ /dimensions variable with installation of single casts or small links

"Grounding Cord" responds to choreographer Remy Charlip's "Clear Your Space" airmail dance, in which written prompts were sent to friends to resolve in their homes. The pewter chain of cast flowers serves as the grounding cord Charlip describes in his prompt, anchoring a room and those who enter it. Charlip was tied to artist-led activist communities, from Black Mountain College to the queer performance group the Cockettes, whose founder, Hibiscus, appeared in the iconic Flower Power photograph placing a flower in a soldier's gun at a 1967 anti-Vietnam War protest. "Ground Cord" threads into a longer history of people power. From Vietnam to Palestine, the piece articulates a chain of movements choreographing toward a freer world.

An initial iteration of the piece was shown at Patient Info in Chicago, IL, as a part of the exhibition “Recognize That Your Name is Already on Every Place You Place Your Feet,” Organized by Chris Reeves in 2024.

Unity Newspaper Vol 15 Issue 1, 2024
Risograph printed publication
16 pages, 11×17”
Edition of 250
Published by Snake Hair Press and Orbis Editions
Designed by Maggie Wong, Qianyue Chen, Sam Alexander

Flower Power, 2025
Steel pipe, flowers
dimensions variable

And featuring the work of the indelible Ena Kantardzic:

echo (in memoriam), 2023 Narcissus pseudonarcissus ink, eco-resin, and spotlights Each spotlight approx. 4.5 in x 6.75 in x 3.5 in/11.43 cm x 17.15 cm x 8.89 cm/dimensions variable

echo 2 (orpheus, shadow), 2025 Narcissus pseudonarcissus and clay dirt bioplastic Each piece approx. 59.25 in x 26.75 in/150.495 cm x 67.945 cm

Special Credit to @monkeyyrunner for providing the fragrance for the exhibition

Photos: Ryan Ko by @memaggiemei

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5 months ago

I am a "Red Diaper Baby" of the 1980's and 90's who grew up in US multi-racial leftist network, somewhat aware of children in Gaza and the West Bank who were radicalized by oppression (see slide 2). I continue to look into the work of the League of Revolutionary Struggles (M-L) and try to look into the archive to navigate the current moment and find traces of futurity. What continues to surface is that liberation is a perpetual intergenerational labor. The newspaper reproduces "the struggle" as a call to action, a material reality, and an unfolding history. But "the struggle," is also the process of becoming "red" and how we read, which is never alone - always in collaboration and reproducing new generations of thought, anger, grief, love, and action.

- END THE GENOCIDE - REPRODUCE LIBERATION NOT OCCUPATION -

The slides here introduce my research on childhood and revolutionary politics of the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L). I shared this work for my Tanda cohort through @chuquimarca.artlibrary and facilitator. Thank you to the friends who joined and my cohort for their generosity and support for this research.

1. Front page of "Unity," volume 11, number 2, January 31, 1988—edited for clarity and conciseness.
Headlines that accompany images read " East LA Child Care Workers - Union battle enters a new phase." and "Palestine - Israeli atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip cannot stop Palestinian resistance."

2. Unity newspaper article from 1985 with a headline that reads "'Children of the Stones' propel Palestinian uprising - excerpts for a talk by Edward Said"

3. Full spread articles in Unity's "world section"

4. A continuation of the spread "world section" with a column dedicated to "Facts and Background On Palestine & Israel"

5. Edited newspaper page that reads " Seeking child care for RED DIAPER BABIES"

6. A definition of "Read Diaper Baby" inserted into the newspaper column on "Seeking child care"

7. Quotes from "Politically Red" by Eduardo Cadava and Sara Nadal-Melsió
and "They Call It Love" by Alva Gotby by @memaggiemei

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3 years ago

Documentation has arrived! 🙌
Thank you, @robertchaseheishman, for your thoughtful lens.

UNITY
February 5th - March 12
Chinese American Museum of Chicago
Open:
Wednesday and Friday, 9:30 AM - 2 PM; Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM - 4 PM

(Center of floor) Offset prints, newsprint, step stool, enamel on cast metal

(wall) Aluminum offset plate, aluminum cast

(corner) Offset print, newsprint, enamel on cast metal, letterpress furniture blocks

Detail images show the piece in the center of floor and include a detail of lead type holding down a page of paper on a section of the installation not fully shared in this set of images.

More to come soon! by @memaggiemei

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4 years ago

So excited to close our first season of Tiger Balm with the conversation between Larry Lee @lardamang and Guanyu Xu @xuguanyu . They talk about working together through the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, getting to know each other when Guanyu was an undergrad at SAIC, and their most recent activities and travels.

Larry Lee is a multimedia artist, independent curator, and writer who earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he teaches in the Art History, Theory and Criticism; Contemporary Practices, and Academic Spine departments. He is also adjunct faculty at Columbia College Chicago and DePaul University.

徐冠宇 Guanyu Xu (b.1993 Beijing) is an artist currently based in Chicago and Beijing. He is the recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Creative Projects Grant, Chicago DCASE Artist Grant, CENTER Development Grant, Hyéres International Festival Prize, PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai Exposure Award, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Annual Competition, and Kodak Film Photo Award. He has received artist residencies including ACRE (Steuben, WI), Light Work (Syracuse, NY), Latitude (Chicago, IL), Pioneer Works (New York, NY), and Swatch Art Peace Hotel (Shanghai, China).

Can’t thank you enough to the Greg Bae Memorial fund and @don.bosco.bae for kicking off this project, to 3Arts Chicago and all of our project supporters for helping us continue, and to Berkley Young, who interned over the summer and contributed research towards future episodes. Give our new episode a listen on tigertigerbalm.net

A heads up that Tiger Balm now has its own IG account! Please give us a follow @tigertigerbalm for future posts. by @memaggiemei

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4 days ago

Inside A Carrier Wave
2026
Vinyl, handwritten font

The font displayed throughout the gallery combines Korean vowels, Hoisanese characters, English letters, and shapes from Greg Bae's collage scroll — each retaining its phonetic characteristics so the semantic and visual languages remain soundable and interpretable, albeit piecemeal.

The text transcribes a conversation between me and artist Kyuri Jeon for Tiger Balm, an intergenerational interview series I started with artist Huong Ngo to archive an artist network stemming from Chicago, including groups like God Damn, started by Greg Bae. While Tiger Balm furthers AAPI representation, this piece works with knowledge shared at the margins—stored for safekeeping while simultaneously jumbled through migration and across generations, invisibly moving through bodies and atmosphere like a radio carrier wave holds latent sound.

Imagine this gallery text as interference with the message, words and voices still scrambled in space but finding form here. Not a glitch but transmission itself—one that articulates how you can't recall your grandmother's name in her dying dialect, trip over pronouns in your second language, or simply try to utter sound from scraps of language, learning to communicate across space and time.

To read the English transcript, please see the link to the Tiger Balm project in my bio.

Created for the exhibition:
Carrier
January 31 - March 14, 2026
Curated by Bosco Bae and John Neff

Carrier is a group exhibition centered on a sixty-foot-long paper and tape collage scroll by the late Chicago-based Korean-American artist Gregory Bae. The work was created from non-alphabetical printed elements, such as punctuation marks and technical graphics, cut from radio instruction manuals. Carrier brings together a group of primarily Chicago-based artists, several of them collaborators and friends of Bae, to respond to the scroll.

Artists: Gregory Bae, Rashayla Marie Brown, Robert Chase Heishman, Kiku Hibino, Kellie Romany, olivier,
Maggie Wong

Photos: Robert Chase Heishman for Bob. taken in Co-Prosperity by @memaggiemei

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5 months ago

A new Tiger Balm Recording is live! 🐯✨

In this conversation, I had the privilege of interviewing Kim Yasuda @kimyasuda . Kim is a legend at @artdept_ucsb for her ambition and can-do spirit. I spoke against the backdrop of the LA fires and housing crisis in the area and nationwide.

Across generations and disciplines, we reflect on what it means to make work that is at once intimate and political: from decolonial inquiry and diasporic memory to public art, pedagogy, and civic engagement. Together, we consider how artists listen, teach, and build with communities—tracing what remains and what can be reimagined.

This conversation continues Tiger Balm’s commitment to intergenerational dialogue within the Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora, foregrounding the relationships that sustain our practices. Thank you to the Greg Bae Memorial Fund and our @3artschicago backers for supporting this project 💞

🎧 Tune in at tigertigerbalm.net

#TigerBalm #HuongNgo #KimYasuda #AAPIArtists #CommunityArchive @kimyasuda by @memaggiemei

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6 months ago

New Tiger Balm conversation out now 🐯✨
In 2024 I had the wonderful opportunity to talk with filmmaker and artist @kyuri.jeon after we met through exhibiting work in "Hope is a discipline" curated by @storefrontpsychic, @eugenehannahpark, @marinachristodoulidou, and @billyfowo.

As contemporaries navigating the same cultural moment, the conversation
between Kyuri and me followed Tiger Balm's intergenerational premise—exploring how history enters our work, how migrations shape stories, and where our inheritances diverge and converge in unexpected ways.

Our dialogue became inpiration for a new work I created for Carrier at Co Prosperity Sphere, a group exhibition responding to the late Gregory Bae's sixty-foot paper-and-tape collage scroll. This release celebrates Greg and the ways his work and his ability to build cultures of solidarity helped shape Tiger Balm. *images to come*

Tiger Balm, co-created by @_bad_spy, is a building and collection of knowledge, practice, and community that centers artists of the AAPI diaspora working in the US. This excerpted transcript, created in a pilot phase supported by the Greg Bae Memorial Fund, is now available.

Read the conversation and see the work that first connected Kyuri and me → tigertigerbalm.net

#TigerBalm #AAPIArtists #GregoryBae #MagieWong #KyuriJeon #AsianDiaspora #IntergenerationalDialogue by @memaggiemei

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8 months ago

Sat. Nov 15th 1-3pm Artists Working Together: Collaborative Educational Models💥 💥💥 with:
Black Lunch Table & keondra bills freemyn
Pollinator & Caroline Woolard
New Crits & Ajay Kurian
Tiger Balm/Unity Newspaper & Maggie Wong
This is a Performance School & DonChristian Jones

Presentations & discussions from artist-founded organizations actively leading alternative educational models today. Please join us! Free & Open to the Public at 205 Hudson St

@huntercollegeartgalleries
@blacklunchtable @keondra
@pollinator_coop @carolinewoolard
@newcrits @browngoblinnyc
@memaggiemei
@thisisaperformanceschool @donchristianjones taken in Hunter College 205 Hudson St by @memaggiemei

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a year ago

We are happy to report that a Tiger Balm recording is ready for your listening pleasure! In conversation is Arlan Huang @orlandonofly, former member of pivotal Asian American movement organizations such as Basement Workshop and Godzilla, and Alex Paik @alexpaik, artist and executive director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid #tigerstrikesasteroid. These two powerhouse individuals reflect on their vantage points across the landscape of art, community, life, and politics. They discuss anti-imperialist community-based political action, the possibilities of iterative abstraction, and what it means to say your work fights fascism. Learn more about Alex and Arlan’s practices and listen to their conversation on the project site linked in our bios.

Tiger Balm is a series of intergenerational conversations between artists of Asian diasporas living in the US. The project lives online at www.tigertigerbalm.net

Thank you again to all who make this project possible, including everyone who donated to our 3AP campaign and the Greg Bae Memorial Fund. This episode is dedicated in particular to Greg, who founded the Chicago-based group God Damn, inspired by groups such as Basement Workshop and Godzilla. These groups provide us with the language for the nuanced and intricate cultivation of Asian American art and the complex imperatives of identity.

Image list:
1. 1974 CitiArts mural. Taking down the scaffold. Arlan Huang is standing on the top tier with Alan Okada.
2. Arlan Huang, 1977 poster for African Liberation Day.
3. Arlan Huang and Lillian Ling, 2016, Non Dimenticar.
4. Alex Paik, Partial Diamond (Permanent Yellow Orange), gouache, paper, nails, dimensions variable, 2024, installed in studio, March 2024 (approx. 3.25 x 5.25 feet)
5. Alex Paik portrait by Liz Sanders by @memaggiemei

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a year ago

This weekend we have back to back hands-on activities for anyone looking to roll up their sleeves and get creative! Join us at our Hub in Back Bay for Unity Newspapers Workshop 11AM-12PM then from 12PM-6PM stop by @mlcs.boston in East Boston for @n_press_boston open hours.
Free and open to all.
#BostonPublicArtTriennial #PublicArtCity #BOStriennial by @memaggiemei

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a year ago

I have been preparing something special with Interference Archive @interferencearchive) for an intergenerational program that includes readings, archive browsing, and art-making activities centered around the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L), a national revolutionary Communist organization active in the 1980s. I have been a long-time admirer of Interference Archive, whose volunteer staff shepherds an open-stacks archival collection, study center, and public programs that encourage critical and creative engagement with the legacies of leftist social movements.

🍎 Playing Red Diaper Babies 🍎
Sunday, September 14, 3 - 5 PM
314 7th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(3 blocks from F/G/R trains at 4th ave./9th street)
🗞️See the link in my bio for details on the event and to RSVP. 🗞️

☀️Program Schedule☀️
3:00-4:00 pm: Open browsing the archive and the League’s publications, facilitated artmaking, and newspaper activity + snacks
4:00-4:30 pm: Performance of Unity Newspaper
4:30-5:00 pm: Open group discussion

The program aims to create a welcoming space for all ages; however, the planned activities are best suited for school-age children and adults alike.

The program marks the launch of my publication, Unity Newspaper, which builds upon the League’s original newspaper and childcare system as a starting point to explore themes of childhood, collective caregiving, and political inheritance. During the reading portion of the event, allied performers and I will read from Unity Newspaper, playing different authors that appear in the publication.

There will be a station for artmaking, archive browsing, and snacks throughout the event.

Unity Newspaper was published by Orbis Editions and Snake Hair Press in 2025. @orbiseditions @snake_hair taken in Interference Archive by @memaggiemei

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a year ago

🐯 We did it! 🐯

Thanks to an incredible wave of support, our Tiger Balm campaign has reached its goal! 🐅🌿 We are beyond grateful to our community for believing in this project and helping us bring it to life.

A heartfelt thank you to our most recent contributors — your generosity made this possible:
Jay Martin @jvmbk, Richard Gessert @richard.gessert, Donna Wong, Sidney Mori Garrett @sidneymori, Maria Gaspar @maria__gaspar, Aline Lo, Caroline Young, Joe Martin @jgmartinjr, Amy Vogel @amyevogel, Lauren Steinberg @lsteinb9, Meghan Considine @meghan___clare, Kirsten Leenaars @kirsten_leenaars, Anna Martine Whitehead @profmartine, Emma Chubb, and Larrie Martin. 💛

Instead of setting a stretch goal, we’d love to invite you to keep the momentum going by supporting organizations doing vital work for our communities. If you contribute $50 or more, let me know and I'll send you a risograph:

🌱 Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights @icirr_il
🌱 Asian Americans Advancing Justice @advancingjustice_aajc
🌱 Luce Immigrant Justice Network Massachusetts @luce_hotline

We also wanted to drop the news about a conversation that was just recorded between Alex Paik @alexpaik, director and founder of #TigerStrikesAsteroid, artist, and art critic, and Arlan Huang @orlandonofly, artist, activist, and member of Godzilla and Basement Workshop. We’ve also recorded conversations between Maggie Wong @memaggiemei, and Kyuri Jeon @kyuri.jeon, and myself with Kim Yasuda @kimyasuda. We're so excited to share more about all of them once they are live!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for helping us launch Tiger Balm. This archive of intergenerational AAPI artist dialogues will exist because of you.

#AAPIArtists #CommunityArchives #CommunityCare #OralHistory by @memaggiemei

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a year ago