New Narratives: Korean American Art and Activism—A virtual benefit for NAKASEC and Adoptees for Justice in partnership with Korean American Artist Collective.

Over the past 30 years, NAKASEC has advanced the immigrant justice movement alongside diverse partners. This year for our second annual New Narratives virtual fundraiser, we will uplift artists whose work stirs emotion, inspires discourse, and raises awareness of important social issues that concern our community members. The theme of this year's event is Korean American Art and Activism, and we are proud to partner with Korean American Artist Collective to present a panel discussion with Hannah Bae, Coleen Baik, Alex Myung, Aram Han Sifuentes, and Eunsoo Jeong.

Purchase your tickets today and join us on May 16—not only in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, but also NAKASEC's 30th anniversary! Consider increasing your support by purchasing raffle tickets and enter to win original artwork created by our panelists.

Proceeds from this virtual fundraiser will help:

• Support our affiliate organizations in carrying out robust voter engagement plans for Asian Americans in the 2024 primary and general elections in Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Virginia.
• Protect immigrant rights including defending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
• Advocate for citizenship for all intercountry adoptees and connect adoptees without citizenship to legal services.
• Strengthen coalitions with other communities of color towards equity for all.

About the Panel

Hannah Bae is a Korean American freelance journalist, nonfiction writer and illustrator who is working on a memoir about what it takes to build a beautiful adult life after healing from childhood trauma. She is a 2024 grantee of the New York State Council on the Arts, a 2021 and 2022 Peter Taylor Fellow for The Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, and the 2020 nonfiction winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. You can find her work in anthologies such as Our Red Book (Simon & Schuster) and (Don’t) Call Me Crazy (Algonquin) and online at Asian American Writers' Workshop's The Margins, Catapult, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets.

Coleen Baik is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer, and writer based in NYC. Areas of focus include memory, and women’s labor in the context of trauma. Her work has been shown at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Everyman Theatre in London, and in domestic and international festivals. She documents her process on the-line-between.com.

Alex Myung is a queer animation artist whose work explores new intersections between sexuality and his Korean adoptee status. It is often influenced by the ten years he spent working as a technical designer in New York City for fashion houses such as Tory Burch, Diane von Furstenberg, DKNY, and Phillip Lim. He currently resides in LA and is a lead background designer for an upcoming Netflix animated series.

Aram Han Sifuentes is a Chicago-based fiber and social practice artist, writer, and educator who works to center immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Solo exhibitions of her work have been shown at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Chicago Cultural Center, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and Hyde Park Art Center. She has been a recipient of a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Joyce Award, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Map Fund, Asian Cultural Council’s Individual Fellowship, 3Arts Award, and 3Arts Next Level/Spare Room Award. She is currently a professor, adjunct, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Eunsoo Jeong is a Los Angeles-based artist and the creator of Koreangry, a comic/zine series based on her daily struggles as a Korean American. The Koreangry zine illustrates the artist's life journey told with this character — photographed with hand-made props in a set.