Dana Heng (DAH-nuh HEHNG) (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Providence, RI. Her creative practice is introspective, inspired by familiar and mundane objects from her upbringing in a Khmerican household. When she was a child, she spent lots of time with her family at work or was looked after by relatives and family friends in the Rhode Island Cambodian community. These sensory memories deeply influence her work–her mom cutting thai silk and sewing intricate lace and beadwork; her aunties loudly commanding the customer lines and tending the cash register; new immigrants portioning and wrapping vegetables in cellophane; neighborhood kids chasing each other in the streets and exploring the “jungle” by Mashapaug pond; hiding in the maze of produce boxes in the dark and silent storage room; birthday parties set to the backdrop of corporate produce calendars. These snapshots are generative sites for making, producing themes of gender, labor, immigration, (dis)identity, and diaspora. Reflecting upon these themes, her work manifests across disciplines–as ceramics, printed matter, edible concoctions, and gatherings–always thinking about the relational quality of the objects and/or performance. Just as these memories include mundane and striking visual symbols and objects, these works only come to life through the people who interact with them.

Dana attended several youth arts organizations, including New Urban Arts, AS220 Youth, and The Steel Yard, as a student during her years at Classical High School. While in college at the University of Vermont, she studied sociology and studio art, continuing to foster a creative and social practice that was instilled in her as a teen in the Providence youth arts scene. Upon returning to RI, Dana dove right back into the NUA community, where she is now employed as the Manager of Artist Mentors. Greatly influenced and inspired by the people and philosophy at NUA, Dana’s practice outside of her day-job is often community-driven. She co-founded Binch Press in 2018, a member-based print shop centering queer and BIPOC artists. She has co-organized the annual Queer/Trans Zinefest in Providence, RI, which is a zine fair and event for independent publishers and artists. In her personal creative practice, Dana makes work based on food culture and memory as it relates to identity and belonging. She was the recipient of the 2019 RISD Museum Artist Fellowship, 2021 Santa Fe Art Institute Labor Residency, 2022 Interlace Project Grant, 2023 Steel Yard Ceramics Micro Residency, and has shown her work in galleries around Providence. She is a collector of random skills and hobbies (her most favorite is cooking), driven by curiosity and a desire to learn and to share.

Moy Chuong (they/them) is a queer Teochew American artist and educator whose work explores domestic objects as containers for identity, grief, and care. Their practice draws upon their personal, familial, and cultural archives, using objects such as vessels, chairs, and altars as stand-ins for a lived experience within our everyday. Through reproduction of and disidentification with the veneration of ancestors, including Buddhist, Taoist, and animistic rituals, their practice seeks new meaning for trans, queer, and disabled bodies that are so often denied physical and emotional shelter. Working within ceramics and Chinese iconography, their work seeks to reconsider the regimented and often gendered conventions of these traditional forms, using these vessels as a means to locate community, find collective power in trans and queer alienation, and map out the possibilities for a freer and more unruly future.