Artists Gallery Talks@PAM-Off Kilter: Power and Pathos 

Join the artists of Off Kilter: Power and Pathos for a series of summer Artists Gallery Talks. Listen to Kim-Trang Tran, Sandra Low, and Keiko Fukazawa as they share the stories behind their work and provide insight into their varied practices. 

Included with Museum admission. RSVP required.

USC PAM Public Programs are made possible by individual and foundation support. To ensure free/low-cost programming, we suggest a donation of $10. All donations go directly to USC PAM public programs. Thank you for helping us keep art programming accessible to all. Please donate here.

Saturday, August 6, 1:00 PM

Session 1:

Artist Kim-Trang Tran will discuss her work in an in-person informal and intimate gallery talk.

Saturday, August 27, 1:00 PM 

Session 2: 

Artists Sandra Low and Keiko Fukazawa will lead a joint in-person gallery talk, providing an insightful tour of their exhibited work. 

Included with Museum admission. RSVP required.

USC PAM Public Programs are made possible by individual and foundation support. To ensure free/low-cost programming, we suggest a donation of $10. All donations go directly to USC PAM public programs. Thank you for helping us keep art programming accessible to all. Please donate here.

More About the Artists

Sandra Low

Sandra Low is a Los Angeles-based artist. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California and completed her bachelor’s degree double majoring in art and sociology at UC Berkeley. She has shown widely across Southern California, including exhibitions at Art Salon Chinatown, Los Angeles International Airport, Walter Maciel Gallery, Chinese American Museum, and a public commission from L.A. Metro. She teaches drawing and painting at Rio Hondo College. 

Low spent much of her childhood being mesmerized by the television screen while shoveling rice into her mouth. Low’s drawings and paintings playfully skewer culture and her own life, constructing internal landscapes both heartfelt and bleak. Through collage and oddball narratives, her art roots around issues of consumerism, family, and the cross-cultural American experience.

Keiko Fukazawa

For more than 35 years, ceramic artist Keiko Fukazawa, has created work in multiple national and cultural contexts, embracing a cultural hybridity that says “anything goes.” Her recent residencies in Jingdezhen, China, known as the “Porcelain Capital,” have sharpened and expanded her perspective, inspiring her to further push social and cultural boundaries with conceptual art. 

Fukazawa’s work has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums in both the U.S. and international venues. She has had one-person shows at Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles; Gerald Peters Contemporary, Santa Fe, and numerous group shows including California State University, Los Angeles and University of South Florida, Tampa. Museum exhibitions of Fukazawa’s work include Los Angeles County Museum of Art; USC Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angeles; American Craft Museum, New York; and Arlington Museum of Art, Texas. 

Kim-Trang Tran

Kim-Trang Tran was born in Vietnam and emigrated to the U.S. in 1975. She received her Master of Fine Art from California Institute of the Arts and has been producing experimental videos since the early 1990s. Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group screenings in venues including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, and the Flaherty Film Seminar. Her “Blindness Series,” eight experimental video shorts investigating blindness and its metaphors, was completed in 2006. Tran is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Creative Capital grant, Getty Mid-Career Fellowship, and Rockefeller Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship, which has enabled her to develop a screenplay based on her mother’s life titled “Call Me Sugar,” which she hopes to direct as a feature film project. Tran is Professor of Art and Media Studies at Scripps College.

More About the Exhibition

How might contemporary artists guide us through this current moment of increasingly entrenched attitudes, distrust, and ongoing uncertainty? Perhaps it requires the point of view of someone positioned on the margins observing events as they unfold. In these turbulent times, the artworks that connect us require honesty and depth of conviction from their makers. The three artists featured in this exhibition share adventurous and experimental attitudes toward their chosen mediums and the uncanny ability to address socio-political issues with immediacy, power, and pathos. Sandra Low, Keiko Fukazawa, and Kim-Trang Tran understand that art draws from personal experience made manifest in explorations of the vital role that history, family, and politics play in our lives. 

Masters of their different mediums, these artists’ works provide social commentary on the influences and power structures that guide our memories and identities. Each artist incorporates familiar imagery into their creations, reminding viewers of our connections to each other and to history’s continued relevance. They underscore the power of women of color in shaping social change using satire and critical commentary. 

Covid Safety Protocols:

We strongly recommend wearing a mask covering the nose and mouth for all visitors (2+) regardless of vaccination status while indoors.

Please practice social distancing from others not in your party.

Please stay home if you are feeling ill or have been exposed to COVID-19.

Please note the above is subject to change in accordance with Los Angeles County, City of Pasadena and USC Health guidelines.