Film Screenings

Photography Exhibit

Concert

Panel Discussions, Lectures, and Presentations

MAY 2025

5/1-31

Photography Exhibit

Being Seen: A Documentary Photography Exhibit

Speaking to the opportunity for photography to be an avenue for processing, visibility, and agency, Rubini Naidu's "Being Seen" is a collaborative film-based documentary photography series tenderly depicting Tricia H's journey of gender transition. Rubini is a Fulbright Scholar and Founder of Empact, a community and consultancy practice where she continues to explore the power of empathy.

Rubini Naidu is an American-born Tamilian documentary photographer, community designer, and interdisciplinary strategist based in Metro-Detroit.  She is drawn to how narratives can powerfully evoke social inquiry and relatability, and my work grapples with social issues in a multidisciplinary approach. Naidu views visual storytelling and community-centered design as tools for decolonization, seeking to reshape perspectives and foster meaningful dialogue.

Rubini has a background in international development, including roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute and as a Fulbright Scholar in India, informs her work. She holds an M.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University, a B.S. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University, and a certificate in Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in Design from Parsons.

THURSDAY
6:00pm

5/1

Film Screening

Giant Robot Magazine: 30 Years of Asian Pop Culture and Beyond

Screening of PBS special: Giant Robot: Asian Pop Culture and Beyond

Giant Robot was a bimonthly magazine that created an appetite for Asian and Asian American pop culture, exploring Sawtelle Boulevard as a Japanese American enclave. Founded in 1994 and driven by Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong, it resulted in a legacy of Asian American artists that achieved worldwide recognition such as David Choe and James Jean. (PBS)

Followed by a Q+A with Giant Robot founders Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong

FRIDAY
5:30pm

5/2

Film Screening

Spinning The Thread of Life - The Documentary Shorts of Toko Shiiki

Short films screened include “in the wake of” (9min), “A Thousand Pebbles on the Ground” (21min), “Over The Sky” (excerpt) (21min), “Spinning the Thread of Life”(10min), and the world premiere of “Reunion” (7min)

Followed by a Q+A with Shiki and Yen Azzaro, subject of “Reunion”

Born and raised in Japan, Toko Shiiki spent most of her life in Tokyo before moving to Michigan in 2005. Toko’s pursuit of using photography as a narrative medium inspired her to explore documentary filmmaking, where she delights in meeting fascinating people and sharing their stories with the world. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally, and has earned multiple awards including The International Photography Awards.

Yen Azzaro is an artist, illustrator, and graphic recorder. Since 2011, her work has helped organizations worldwide communicate ideas succinctly and beautifully. Her services are most sought-after for topics like food, health, and education access; Diversity Equity Inclusion Belonging efforts; technology and innovation; environmental, social, and racial justice. 

Yen is the Illustrator-in-residence for Culture Source, 2024 Arc Fund recipient, and the co-host of Cadence: A Podcast for Creatives. She was the 2022 Graduate Hotels Sweet Dreams Society artist-in-resident and exhibited her piece ALTAR | ALTER in Ann Arbor and Roosevelt Island, NYC. She completed her first year studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a BFA from University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design.

Co-sponsored by Detroit PBS

WEDNESDAY
6:00pm

5/7

Panel Discussion

Make Tomorrow Today

Join us for a panel discussion exploring the socio-cultural issues affecting AAPI populations today and in the near future. In this current moment of a hyper-accelerated news cycle, it’s key to reflect on the core topics that directly impact the daily lives of AAPI populations. What are some possible solutions to these issues, and how can we encourage greater awareness and support for addressing them effectively? What strategies can we quickly implement to build a better world for future generations?

Featured panelists include: Kristine Patnugot of Rising Voices, Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe of The Tetra, and Rubini Naidu of Empact

Moderated by Lily Chen of the Detroit Historical Society

Co-sponsored by Rising Voices

THURSDAY
5:30pm

5/8

Lecture /Workshop

1893 Cyclone Damage to the Chinese Laundry

featuring Linette Lao of Invisible Engines

Linette will present her process in creating a zine about the Ypsilanti Chinese Laundry that was destroyed by a cyclone in the late 19th century. Through a hands on workshop, she will also showcase why creating a zine was the best method to tell this forgotten story and demonstrate how attendees can begin creating their own zines

Linette Lao created Invisible Engines in 2001, naming it for the unseen desires that power us to make things—inspiration, imagination, and the impulse to reach out and connect to each other. She has over twenty years of experience helping nonprofits and foundations build strong connections through strategic and creative communications. Prior to Invisible Engines, Linette worked as an inhouse designer in tech and health startups, as well as at publications like the Atlanta Jewish Times and Style magazine. She is a certified Level C strategist, a zinemaker, and a lecturer in the interdisciplinary creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University.

FRIDAY
6:00pm

Film Screening / Music Performance

5/16

Goketsu Jiraiya (Jiraiya the Hero) - Live Score

Live improvised score by Kioto Aoki, Haruhi Kobayashi, and Mai Sugimoto

Followed by live group improvisation set by Sugimoto, Kobayashi, Aoki featuring AnJelic and Marcus Elliot

Enjoy the stellar trio of Kioto Aoki (taiko drums), Haruhi Kobayashi (voice + electronics), and Mai Sugimoto (saxophone) as they perform an improvised score for the classic Japanese silent film Gouketsu Jiraiya (Jiraiya the Hero). 

Following the screening, Aoki, Kobayashi, and Sugimoto will be joined by harpist Anjelic and Detroit Kresge Art Fellow saxophonist Marcus Elliot for an improvised group set.

Gouketsu Jiraiya (Jiraiya the Hero) is a 1921 silent ninja film starring Onoe Matsunosuke, known as "Medama no Matsu-chan," the first star of Japanese cinema. The story of Jiraiya, who is well known in kabuki and kodan for his magical ability to control toads, is enhanced by Matsunosuke's brisk movement and director Makino Shozo's trick photography using stop motion and double exposure, making it a film full of the variety and excitement that only film can offer. Other highlights include Nikkatsu Kyoto's handsome star Kataoka Shoen playing the role of the beautiful young man Takasago Yuminosuke, and the famous female impersonator Kataoka Nagamasa playing Tsunade, who transforms into a slug. (National Film Archive of Japan)

Kioto Aoki (青木希音) is a Chicago-based artist, educator and musician, whose studio practice navigates various mechanisms and propositions of spatial and visual acuity that respond to, are formed by and creates observations or experiences of the body in space. The body activates, holds, and navigates propositions of sight and relativity as playful expressions of visual and formal imprints of historical presence. The artist’s body and the human form often becomes an inflection point that oscillates between assertions of personal, communal or universal experience and cultural histories. Primarily rooted in analogue image-making traditions of photography and cinema, Aoki integrates architectural, biographical and geographic histories that balance material and research-based approaches through nuances of material form, spatial play and exhibition strategies.

​Aoki’s work is held in the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Library and private collections. Musical projects include solo and collaborative albums released by Asian Improv Records and FPE Records, Yoko Ono’s SKYLANDING, Tatsu Aoki’s The MIYUMI Project, Experimental Sound Studio’s Sonic Pavilion Festival, and the Soundtrack series at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She has performed and exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), the Chicago Cultural Center, 6018|North (Chicago), Gallery Kobo Chika (Tokyo, Japan), The Lab (San Francisco), and the Barbican Centre (London); among others. Aoki also leads Tsukasa Taiko, a program of Asian Improv aRts Midwest (AIRMW); and is program curator at AIRMW.

Haruhi Kobayashi is a Chicago-based musician and sound artist. Originally from Tokyo, Haruhi began her career as a Japanese-pop singer-songwriter, releasing solo albums and composing for TV and film. Throughout her formative years in the Japanese pop industry, she became interested in the underlying social and emotional connotations and conditions of her own voice and the inextricable ties between one’s voice and their identity. She started to manipulate her voice into unidentifiable sounds, liberating it from its “human” constraints. Her recent body of work navigates the liminal space between the voice and its identity, and the simplicity and joys of songwriting with themes of tradition, love, fear, and humanity. Her work intersects experimental pop, classical composition and avant-garde songwriting through voice, bass, and electronics. She invites audiences to engage with both familiar and unexpected sonic textures. She is currently the High Concept Labs AIR resident 2024. 

Mai Sugimoto is a saxophonist, composer, educator, and active member of Chicago's jazz and creative music scene. Born/Raised, her debut album (Asian Improv Records, 2018), explores this cultural and musical binary, juxtaposing her Japanese upbringing with the American jazz idiom. Sugimoto is a core member of the quartet Hanami, whose two albums similarly mix Japanese culture into creative music. Sugimoto has performed five times at the Chicago Jazz Festival: in 2015 with Hanami, in 2019, 2022, and 2024 as a leader, and in 2018 and 2022 with renowned bassist Tatsu Aoki, with whom she frequently plays, including appearances in his Fred Anderson Legacy Band. Her first solo album, monologue (Asian Improv Records) was released in March of 2021. Sugimoto’s work also appears on Natural Information Society’s album, Since Time Is Gravity (Eremite, 2023). Of her latest album, Sunlight filtering Through Leaves (Asian Improv Records, 2024), music critic Peter Margasak writes that “[the album] conveys that singular joy of good improvised music, when it’s not about ripping solos but group unity. Naturally, I’m advising you all to pay close attention to Sugimoto from here on out.”

AnJelic is a Detroit-born artist, vocalist, producer, and harpist whose music fuses soul, alternative R&B, and ethereal melodies. Drawing inspiration from the city's Motown heritage and trailblazing harpists like Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, she pushes the boundaries of the instrument, blending its rich, resonant tones with contemporary production and vocal expression. Her journey with the harp began at Cass Tech’s prestigious harp and vocal program, where she first discovered its transformative power. The first pluck of its strings felt like opening a door to an entirely new world—one where the harp could transcend expectations and find a home in the modern soundscape. Now, she is carving out her own space in music, exploring new textures, rhythms, and sonic possibilities with a vision of bringing the harp into fresh musical territories. Through her artistry, AnJelic crafts immersive soundscapes that bridge eras, seamlessly weaving tradition and innovation into a sound that is uniquely her own. Each note carries echoes of the past and whispers of the future, inviting listeners into a space where the familiar meets the unexpected, and the harp sings in ways it never has before

FRIDAY
5:30pm

5/23

Writing Workshop

Writing for our Lives

with Frances Kai-Hwa Wang of PBS NewsHourJoin journalist, poet, essayist, and educator Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in an empowering writing workshop.

“We write to find our voices, to discover our meaning, and to fight for our message - to write for our lives! With short timed writing exercises, we will write and share our stories, discuss ways our stories and struggles may have been discounted by others, and lift up our stories and perspectives to make our mark on today, this moment.” - Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a journalist, essayist, speaker, activist, and poet focused on issues of diversity, race, culture, and the arts. The child of immigrants, she was born in Los Angeles, raised in Silicon Valley, and now divides her time between Michigan and the Big Island of Hawai‘i. 

Her writing has appeared at NBC News Asian America, PRI Global Nation, New America Media, Pacific Citizen, Angry Asian Man, Cha Asian Literary Journal, Kartika Review, Drunken Boat, and several anthologies, journals, and art exhibitions. She teaches courses on Asian/Pacific Islander American media and civil rights at University of Michigan, and she teaches creative writing at University of Hawaii Hilo and Washtenaw Community College. She co-created a multimedia artwork for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Indian American Heritage Project online and travelling art exhibition. 

Wang is a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge Detroit winner, Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellow on Poverty, and Keith Center for Civil Rights Detroit Equity Action Lab Race and Justice Reporting Fellow on Arts and Culture. 

Co-sponsored by the Washtenaw Community College Office of Student Access & Success

WEDNESDAY
6:00pm

5/28

Artist Talk

Expanding Constructs - An Artist Talk w/ Rubini Naidu

Join us for an engaging artist talk with documentary photographer Rubini Naidu, as she discusses her photo series, "Being Seen," on transgender visibility, and how portraiture itself functions as an avenue for processing and agency. Rubini is a Fulbright Scholar and Founder of Empact, a community and consultancy practice where she continues to explore the power of empathy.