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.
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.
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.