SAM Talks: Asia Society Seattle Series

Join us for a series of talks designed and dedicated to promoting understanding of Asia and the Asian diaspora. Hear from Asian and Asian American artists, writers, business and community leaders, and others engaged with Asia, on their work, ideas, experiences, and impact. Central themes will include arts and culture, policy and business, technology, sustainability, and education. This speaker series is a collaboration between Asia Society Seattle and Seattle Art Museum.

Explore the intersections of art and music by joining us for a conversation with celebrated visual artist Zheng Chongbin and Asian Hall of Fame musician Daniel Pak.

Born in Shanghai in 1961, Zheng Chongbin has moved freely across a variety of media throughout his three-decade career. His versatile large-scale light space installations have transformed the Kennin-ji temple in Kyoto and been installed in the atrium of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and Liquid Space. His immersive video pieces have been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Light and Space, and at the Shanghai Biennale 2016-17 in The Power Station of Art.

Systematically exploring and deconstructing the classical Chinese ink tradition and Western pictorial abstraction, Zheng’s art centers on the notion of the world as always in flux. Inherent in pre-modern Chinese and especially Daoist thought, this worldview enables contemporary inquiries into complex systems like climate, social behavior, and artificial intelligence. In his video installations, Zheng represents processes of nature—from molecular and cellular to topographical and climatic—in the scale of human perception through microscopic and macroscopic imagery and accompanying soundscapes, unfolding these processes spatially and temporally.

Daniel Pak, originally from O`ahu, is a singer, songwriter, producer, nonprofit executive, and arts and culture champion. As frontman for Kore Ionz from 2008–2018, Pak shared the stage with The Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Steel Pulse, and many of reggae’s greatest bands.

Pak is the co-founder and executive director of Totem Star, a recording studio and creative youth development organization supporting a diverse community of young recording artists through music production, performance, and mentorship. In January 2024 Totem Star opened the doors to its new state-of-the-art recording studio at historic landmark King Street Station, built in partnership with the City of Seattle and the Cultural Space Agency. Pak is a commissioner emeritus of the Seattle Music Commission, has served as a Governor for the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Recording Academy, and is currently a Trustee at The Bush School. In November 2022, Pak was inducted into the Asian Hall of Fame.

Tickets
Tickets are $25 for nonmembers/$15 for members.
Each ticket includes complimentary, after-hours access to the Seattle Asian Art Museum galleries!