Project for Empty Space is delighted to present The Ocean Doesn’t Recognize Tears, a solo exhibition by 2024 – 2025 Artist In Residence Andrea Chung at the PES Ironside Newark location from May 6, 2025, through August 17, 2025. A reception will be held on Saturday, May 17th, from 4 to 7 pm.

Born in Newark, Chung’s exhibition explores questions of heritage, familial love, and parenting within a larger autobiographical context.

Chung’s use of actively dissolving sugar that she casts into intricate sculptures pays homage to the Caribbean’s most popular product export during slavery, more specifically through the Atlantic Slave Trade. Chung’s work is research-heavy, diving into patterns and themes that have shown up throughout history at this time; migration involving perishable and precious materials, post-colonial countries, and the human body.

In addition to the rich history she is researching, the artist’s work dances along the lines of vulnerability and shared experience as she takes the audience through the relationship between colonization and its impacts on child-rearing. As a first-generation immigrant with her own generational curses to break, Chung explores themes of parenting, nurture vs. nature, and tradition. The work is intrinsically reflective, exploring the complicated relationship dynamic she has with her Caribbean father, which in turn impacted her approach to motherhood.

Chung presents intricate, labor-intensive objects that disrupt traditional perspectives on race, gender, bodily autonomy, and historical archives.

About Andrea Chung:

Andrea Chung (b. 1978, Newark, NJ) lives and works in San Diego, California. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design, New York, and a MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Her work has been exhibited in biennales such as Prospect 4, New Orleans, and the Jamaican Biennale, Kingston, Jamaica as well as the subject of museum solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Manetti Shrem Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada. Her work has been included domestically and internationally at venues such as the Nasher Museum at Duke University, Minneapolis Institute of Art,  Frist Art Museum, Ford Foundation Art Galleries, Guangdong Times Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Center. She has participated in national and international residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, McColl Center for Visual Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been written about in the Artfile Magazine, New Orleans Times, Picayune, Artnet, The Los Angeles Times, and International Review of African-American Art among others. Her work is included in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, NoVo Foundation, Cleveland Clinic Art & Medicine Institute, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Davis Museum at Wesley College, the Addison Museum of American Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.