Welcome to the AVE Blog!
A home for stories, art, and activism from the Asian diaspora in Europe. Dive in for snapshots of AVE’s work, powerful interviews, exhibition reflections, and decolonizing critique — all amplifying voices that matter.
Letter from the curator #4: Tikar and an active intervention into colonial order
In our fourth Letter from the Curator, Jeongwon Seo invites us to explore Yee I-Lann’s TIKAR/MEJA, where traditional woven mats embroidered with tables invite us to rethink height, hierarchy, and modernity. From the ground level, the work asks how colonialism reshaped not only our living spaces, but the way we see and value the world.
Letter from the curator #3: A Story of Oseonbo: Sounds Lost in Translation
In our fourth Letter from the Curator, Jeongwon Seo invites us to explore YoungEun Kim’s work, A Story of Oseonbo: Sounds Lost in Translation, by tracing Korean traditional music transcribed into Western notation. Through this work, we ask ourselves how sounds and ways of hearing were transformed, translated, and lost in the tides of colonial modernity.
Celebrating four years of NewGen Festival
This article features the Berlin NewGen film festival, now in its fourth edition. This independent, community-led festival carved out a space for Asian diasporic cinema and filmmakers to gain visibility in Germany. We spoke with co-founder and director Huangdan Zhao about what it takes to sustain an Asian film festival in Berlin, and why representation on screen matters
Letter from the curator #2: the All-Female Traditional Korean Theatre
In our second Letter from the Curator, Jeongwon Seo, invites us to Yeoseong Gukguek, the all-female traditional theater in Korea. Through siren eun young jung's works, we explore together how this stage cracked open gender norms and still speaks to questions of power and belonging today.
Seen and Unseen: Identity, Resistance, and Visibility @Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis
In this issue, we reflect on SEEN, an exhibition that confronts incarceration, injustice, and transformation by the collective ‘we are all criminals‘. Through our eyes, we share how the works moved us — from the weight of confinement to the quiet power of healing.
Letter from the curator: #1—Art and Postcolonialism
In our first Letter from the Curator, Jeongwon Seo invites us into a conversation on art and postcolonialism—one that looks beyond the buzzwords and asks how artists today are challenging power, rewriting narratives, and imagining new futures. From the Venice Biennale to Busan, this reflection explores why postcolonial critique remains urgent today and introduces the artists and questions we’ll be spotlighting in future issues.
AVE interview: Asian Persuasion - In conversation with founders Joni & Christopher
This May, Asian Voices Europe spoke with Joni Sheila and Christopher D’havé, founders of Asian Persuasion. What began as a project to support Asian artists in Belgium has grown into something more meaningful: a platform for solidarity, care and visibility in a space where many have felt invisible. Their stories reflect a shared journey of navigating bicultural identity, longing for belonging, and daring to build something new.