Opening Reception: Two Uses of the Past

Opening Reception: Two Uses of the Past

The AHL Foundation is pleased to present Two Uses of the Past, a dual exhibition featuring the works of the late Professor Changboh Chee (1923–2023) and Seongmin Ahn. On view from July 26 to August 23, 2025, at AHL Foundation Gallery in Harlem, this exhibition marks the organization’s first curatorial integration of both its interior gallery space and its outdoor Murals on Display public art wall. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 26, 2025 at AHL Foundation Gallery from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.

The exhibition title is inspired by literary critic Van Wyck Brooks’s 1918 essay On Creating a Usable Past, which argued that history should not be preserved in a static form but continuously reinterpreted and repurposed from a contemporary perspective. In this spirit, Chee and Ahn present two divergent but complementary artistic responses to Korean cultural heritage: Chee honored tradition through preservation, emphasizing harmony and continuity, while Ahn engages tradition through transformation, reimagining historical symbols with a critical and playful eye. Together, their dialogue raises pressing questions: How can the past be called into the present? And how do artists choose to use or renew the traditions they inherit?

The exhibition features over 30 ink paintings created by Changboh Chee between the 1960s and 2000s, alongside eight recent works by Seongmin Ahn, including her large-scale outdoor mural Human Kind One Planet. Inspired by 19th-century Korean minhwa (folk painting) letter art, the mural reimagines the English alphabet using Korean calligraphic form (Gungseo-che), adorned with symbolic images from nature. The work reflects on cultural diversity, ecological awareness, and a shared global future.

Born during the Japanese occupation of Korea in 1923, Changboh Chee lived through war, exile, and political turmoil. After becoming separated from his family during the Korean War, he emigrated to the United States, where he earned his PhD in sociology from Duke University. From the 1960s, he taught at Long Island University while remaining a prominent advocate for South Korean democracy and reunification—delivering a petition with one million signatures to the UN Human Rights Commission in 1980 demanding the release of then-imprisoned dissident Kim Dae-jung. An intellectual and artist, Chee taught courses on East Asian art and Korean cinema in addition to sociology. From his late 30s, he also pursued Korean ink painting, forming friendships with prominent Korean artists such as Nam June Paik, Whanki Kim, Kim Tschang-yeul, and John Pai. His exhibitions in New York in the 1960s and 70s reflected his deep conviction that human well-being is rooted in the cycles of nature. His elegant brushwork and symbolic use of cranes, lotuses, boats, bamboo, and deer reveal a quiet moral resolve: despite living through injustice and war, he chose to depict peace, harmony, and compassion. His art was an act of hope.

Seongmin Ahn earned her BFA and MFA in Korean painting from Seoul National University and her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Based in New York, Ahn has presented her work at major institutions including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, the Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University, and the Hello Museum (Seoul). Her work is in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Princeton University Art Museum, Hudson River Museum, Hello Museum, and Johns Hopkins Hospital, among other institutions. Ahn has received awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the CUE Art Foundation, AHL Foundation, and Café Royal Cultural Foundation. She has taught at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queens Museum, Queens College CUNY, the Art Students League of New York, and SVA.

Ahn reinterprets symbols from traditional Korean landscape painting and minhwa through a contemporary perspective infused with humor and critical insight. She employs not only ink and hanji but also contemporary materials such as vinyl, laser-cut panels, and UV lighting to explore the boundaries between tradition and modernity, the everyday and technology, and to reflect on the complexities of identity in a globalized era.

This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of the Changboh Chee Foundation. On Saturday, August 2, Seongmin Ahn will lead a public minhwa painting workshop. Further details and registration information will be shared soon, with registration opening on July 21 via the AHL Foundation website( http://www.ahlfoundation.org).

Two Uses of the Past will be on view from July 26 through August 23, 2025. The gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday, from 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Admission is free. The outdoor mural Human Kind One Planet is visible at all times on the exterior wall of AHL Foundation Gallery.

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