Smack Mellon and Asia Art Archive in America (AAAiA) are thrilled to announce a collaborative program featuring curator and writer Pallavi Surana and artist Maia Chao. This conversation will focus on Surana’s current exhibition at Smack Mellon, Remains to be seen, which features new works by Chao alongside eight other artists. Surana and Chao will be joined by AAAinA’s Manager of Programs and Collections, Claire Kim who will moderate their conversation. This program will be hosted at Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth St. Brooklyn, NY 11201.
Remains to be seen will be on view at Smack Mellon from June 14 – July 27, 2025. The exhibition brings together nine artists whose practices probe the afterlives of waste in relation to memory, ecology, consumerism, and identity. Through sound, sculpture, video, and ritual, the artists ask how we might engage waste not only as residue, but as witness. Some works mine familial and migratory memory; others confront ecological collapse or critique capitalist excess. Their gestures are playful, mournful, and speculative. Together, they challenge linear narratives of progress and decay, proposing alternate modes of value, care, and connection.
Pallavi Surana is an arts writer and curator based in New York. She is currently working on projects with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and curator Cecilia Alemani. Previously, she has held positions at SculptureCenter and Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Flint, and St+India Foundation in India; as well as the Cookhouse Gallery and the Camden Arts Centre in London. Her writing has appeared in publications like Eflux Criticism, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper and Ocula, among others. Pallavi has been a visiting critic at various residencies around New York City, such as Pioneer Works, EFA Studios and NARS foundation, among others.
Maia Chao is a Philadelphia-based artist whose collaborative work spans social practice, performance, and video. She has made commissioned works for The Shed, MoMA Education, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Her projects have been presented at the RISD Museum, Bronx Museum, Oregon Contemporary, Mural Arts Philadelphia, Tufts University Art Galleries, and Boston Center for the Arts. Maia has participated in residencies at Pioneer Works, Fine Arts Work Center, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. She was a 2022-23 Pew Fellow, and is currently Public Artist in Residence at Times Square Arts. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Image: Still from “Waste Scenes,” a two-channel video (40:38) Cinematography by Catching on Thieves (left)