Join us for a spring brunch and artist talk on Sunday, May 18 at 11 AM, at Project for Empty Space’s Ironside Gallery, 110 Edison Place, Newark, NJ. Enjoy breakfast bubbles and a warm gathering featuring 2022 Artist In Residence Andrea Chung in conversation with award-winning writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist Tao Leigh Goffe. Surrounded by Chung’s solo exhibition Ocean Doesn’t Recognize Tears, the two will reflect on heritage, familial love, and parenting through a rich autobiographical lens.

About Ocean Doesn’t Recognize Tears:

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. Learn more about the exhibition and artist here.

About Guest Speaker, Tao Leigh Goffe:Tao Leigh Goffe is an award-winning writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years, she has worked as an academic and has been invited to give keynote lectures in her specialities of colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan, where she is an Associate Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history.  Dr. Goffe’s book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025)).  Learn more about Tao: www.taoleighgoffe.com