In Conversation: Andrea Andersson, Joyce Chung, Anne Ishii and Jordan Stein

Andrea Andersson serves as founding director and curator of Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, a cultural organ for artists of the global diaspora based in New Orleans. Working with artists at the borders of art and archives, figure and ground, text and textile, she commits to a study of the indefinite field of art writing. Together with Siglio Press, she has co-edited a series of artists’ books since 2016. In recent years, she has edited publications and organized exhibitions with artists including Yto Baradda, Sanford Biggers, Helen Cammock, Troy Montes Michie, Cecilia Vicuña, Tina Girouard and Alia Farid.

Anne Ishii is the program director at United States Artists, and until the summer of 2024, executive director of Asian Arts Initiative. She is Co-Chair of the Board of the Asian American Writers Workshop, and volunteers service to the field of arts and culture as a writer and musician herself. Anne is a writer and editor by trade, with a background in Japanese letters. Her work hinges on issues relating to gender and sexuality. In 2013 she co-founded MASSIVE GOODS: a lifestyle brand and arts agency representing queer and feminist artists from Japan. MASSIVE has produced multiple volumes of graphic novels and a line of clothing and accessories. She has been published in BUST, Nylon, Slate, Publishers Weekly, The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer and many other publications. She has translated and rewritten over twenty books.

Joyce Chung is the Curator at Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia, where she oversees the exhibition and performance program. Her curatorial projects focus on the complexity of identity and representation through the lens of the politics of place. Chung is also interested in artistic exploration of struggles and hardships that are often overlooked, such as those of ethnic and gender minorities, women, and immigrants. She previously worked at a number of museums and galleries both in Korea and the USA, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Hyundai Card, Kukje Gallery, as well as for the Gwangju Biennale and Performa, New York. Chung holds an MA in the Humanities with a concentration in Art History from the University of Chicago and a BA in Art History from Wesleyan University.

Jordan Stein is a curator and writer based in San Francisco. He is the author of Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts (Pre-Echo Press, 2024), a New York Times "Best Art Book of the Year," and Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo’s Estocada & Other Pieces (Soberscove Press, 2021). He has independently organized exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Artists Space, Yale Union, and more, and in 2017 founded Cushion Works, an exhibition space in the Mission District that links past and present through the varied presentation of critical—and often overlooked—artworks, histories, and ideas.