Long Distance Relationship: Asian American Comics Artists and the Complexities of Connecting

Eddie Ahn’s detailed renderings unpack his conflicted feelings about his chosen profession and his Korean American parents’ expectations. Rina Ayuyang’s kinetic hand-made drawings and moody digital renderings detail her love of performance and its role in the Filipino American experience. With dense pen and ink compositions, Tessa Hulls interweaves Chinese history and three generations of trauma and love. From line drawings to complex colored pencil compositions, MariNaomi’s projects use irony and humor to chronicle her relationships with lovers, family, friends, northern California, and Japan and challenge simplistic concepts of identity. Thien Pham’s digital creations use food to understand his family’s story of immigration from Vietnam and the work required to survive and build a sense of belonging in California.

Together, the works in Long Distance Relationship demonstrate the power of sequential art to depict emotional depth and the universal longing for connection.

–Glori Simmons and Jenifer K Wofford, Curators

Image credit: Tessa Hulls, from Feeding Ghosts, A Graphic Memoir, ink on paper, 2024