Beta Space: Kang Seung Lee and Ed Aulerich-Sugai

For the ninth iteration of SJMA’s Beta Space series, multidisciplinary artist Kang Seung Lee reactivates the life and practice of late Bay Area artist and gardener Ed Aulerich-Sugai (1950–1994). A collaboration across time, the installation includes new works by Lee staged in dialogue with Aulerich-Sugai’s seldom-exhibited paintings, drawings, and objects. The exhibition also draws on Lee’s extensive conversations with the late artist’s friends and former romantic partners, who have preserved his studio and garden. Lee’s research-based practice and projects examine the stakes of memory for queer subjects, composing new cultural histories while acknowledging the losses and erasures wrought by the AIDS epidemic and systemic homophobia. Celebrating the communal work of remembrance, Beta Space: Kang Seung Lee and Ed Aulerich-Sugai offers an expanded model of archives as living, distributed networks.