Anna Kuo
b. 1951, Milwaukee, WI
Ming 1 (Darkening of the Light), 1989
Mixed media on hollow core door
Courtesy Asian American Art Centre and Think!Chinatown

Anna Kuo’s paintings meditated on a “metaphysical experience.” Often featuring ghostly, haunting images, Kuo’s spiritual paintings consist of abstract forms and gestural linework. Kuo’s Ming 1 (Darkening of the Light) was featured in the AAAC’s exhibition CHINA: June 4 1989, which the AAAC staged in protest of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China. CHINA: June 4 1989 debuted at the AAAC in 1989, and later traveled to the Blue Helman Warehouse and PS1. The exhibition featured over 280 artists in its initial showings, including Kuo.

The exhibition was reprised in 2014 at Whitebox Art Center.   The exhibition invited all interested artists to participate by submitting a small work and/or a standing panel like Kuo’s Ming 1 (Darkening of the Light). The panels were displayed in the center of the exhibition and were displayed linked together as a signifier of working together towards a different future in China and beyond. Curator Robert Lee stated of the show that “Tiananmen Square... is an issue that has affected everyone. The spectacle of human courage, the nature of freedom, the crushing of life and its ideals, the issue of human rights, of censorship and its revival, these issues cannot be met with silence, with political and economic expediency.”