Exhibitions
BECOMING/BELONGING: TENNESSEE ASIAN ARTISTS
The Emporium Center / 100 S. Gay St. August 5 - September 26th
Leticia Bajuyo, Nuveen Barwari, Sai Clayton, Sepideh Dashti, Tao Huang, Mable Ni, Sisavanh Phouthavong, KT Wester, Meng Cheng Collective's, Thandi Cai, Lili Nacht, Yidan Zeng
The Arts & Culture Alliance of Greater Knoxville proudly presents BeComing / BeLonging: Tennessee Asian Artists curated by Karlota Contreras-Koterbay at the Balcony Gallery of The Emporium from August 7 to September 26, 2026. The public events and meet the artists during First Fridays, 5 to 8 pm, on August 7, with reading from Jia Pu: Cooking Our Way Home by Meng Cheng Collective’s Lili Nacht and Yidan Zeng at 6pm; and September 4, Printmaking with Mable Ni.
The exhibition BeComing/BeLonging explores the materiality of the self in the midst of diaspora, displacement, longing and belonging. Artists in the exhibition represent polyphony of visual voices that provide glimpse on the identities tethered to the notion of Asia and Tennessee, both as linchpins, rather than monoliths. The complex dialogue on identity, becoming and belonging are unshrouded, foregrounding each individuals’ whisperings through creative practices.
Curated as part of the Adapted/Adopted exhibition series that reinvestigates the construction and hybridity of self, as paved by the process of diaspora, both voluntary and imposed, like that in cases of transnational refugees, migrants and adoptees. The women and gender exbpansive individuals in the exhibition all have Asian lineage within the embrace of American families, either as second or third generation Asian Americans, immigrants or naturalized professionals, or adopted youths, most are liminal citizens of in-between cultures.
Curator Karlota Contreras-Koterbay, a migrant Filipinx based in Appalachia references Tennessee and Asia as places significant to identity, material grounds, unbound, fertile, and vibrant that invigorates the process of ‘becoming’ as visualized through material practice. The reference of place are not meant to geographically restrict nor culturally stereotype, but rather employed as geographic points, with permeability, mobility and mutability as nurturing grounds for hybrid and liminal identities.
Karlota I. Contreras-Koterbay, Director of ETSU Tipton-Ashe & Slocumb Galleries curates and juries exhibitions nationwide and abroad. She received degree in B.A. in Anthropology and M.A. Art History from University of the Philippines- Diliman. She is member of IKT International Association of Contemporary Art Curators, International Council of Museums, Southeastern College Art Conference. Contreras-Koterbay is recipient of ETSU Outstanding Community Service Award (2025) and TAM Awards of Excellence, she is also co-Director of Crafting Blackness Initiative, a research, publication and exhibition series advancing visibility of Black Craft artists in Tennessee.
Special thanks to the Tennessee Arts Commission and Arts Fund from East Tennessee Foundation, ETSU Slocumb Galleries, and Knox Asian Festival. Gallery is located at 100 S. Gay Street with viewing hours Monday - Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM and Saturday from 10 AM to 1PM. For more information, please call 865.523.7543 or visit www.theemporiumknoxville.com.
