Charlene Liu’s Mural Marks New Series At Henry Art Gallery

The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington has announced its summer 2025 exhibitions, showcasing an ambitious lineup of contemporary works that reflect the museum’s ongoing commitment to social engagement, cultural inquiry, and artistic experimentation. The exhibitions—“Spirit House,” “we leak, we exceed,” and a newly commissioned mural by Charlene Liu—invite audiences into immersive explorations of ancestry, identity, and the systems that shape personal and collective memory.

All exhibitions are free to the public, part of the Henry’s effort to increase accessibility and engagement as a cultural anchor in the Pacific Northwest.

Opening July 26, “Spirit House” brings together the work of 33 Asian American and Asian diasporic artists to examine how art can mediate between the worlds of the living and the dead. The exhibition takes inspiration from Thai spirit houses—small devotional structures meant to house protective spirits—and reimagines them as artistic spaces to process grief, trauma, migration, and generational memory.

Through video, sculpture, painting, and installation, the artists confront histories shaped by war, displacement, and familial silence. Many works focus on reconnecting fragmented narratives and making sense of inherited memory. Artists such as Dinh Q. Lê, Korakrit Arunanondchai, and Do Ho Suh use layered visual languages to explore themes of loss, home, and reincarnation. Others, including Tammy Nguyen, Jarod Lew, and Stephanie H. Shih, embed deeply personal symbolism within broader reflections on diaspora and identity.

“Spirit House” invites viewers to reflect on what it means to live with ghosts—both literal and metaphorical—and how these presences can inform understanding across generations. The exhibition creates space for mourning, reflection, and reconnection, suggesting that ancestral memory can be a source of both healing and transformation.

Following in August, Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s “we leak, we exceed” opens August 23 in the museum’s double-height gallery. Rasheed, a Brooklyn-based artist and writer, is known for her investigations into Black epistemology, poetics, and the politics of language. This new immersive installation continues her engagement with systems of meaning, learning, and belief, and how these structures compress or distort complex experiences.

Drawing on theories from physics, Black critical thought, and information systems, Rasheed uses sound, video, and architectural interventions to interrogate the concept of “compression”—a process by which information is abbreviated, simplified, or flattened for storage and efficiency. In her work, compression becomes a metaphor for the reduction of Black life, identity, and expression under social and political constraints.

“We leak, we exceed” presents an alternative to this framework, embracing what Rasheed calls “Black excess and expansion” as a form of resistance and liberation. The exhibition includes sprawling wall text, collaged visuals, and spatial gestures that disrupt conventional reading and invite viewers into nonlinear, embodied forms of understanding. Rasheed’s return to the Henry builds on her 2021 residency at the University of Washington, where she engaged with scholars across disciplines to explore questions at the intersection of the arts and sciences.

Complementing these major exhibitions is a new outdoor mural by Charlene Liu, marking the launch of a new mural series in the Henry’s Sculpture Court. Liu, a Eugene-based artist originally from Taiwan, creates layered compositions that combine personal narrative, cultural motifs, and decorative forms. Her work often draws from still life painting, textile patterns, and culinary imagery to consider themes of heritage and belonging.

For this mural, Liu constructs a fantastical landscape rooted in food-inspired forms—vegetables, kitchen tools, and organic shapes appear in dialogue with natural and domestic environments. The mural celebrates food not only as sustenance but as a conduit for cultural transmission and identity formation, particularly within diasporic communities. By situating culinary references within a public art context, Liu invites viewers to reflect on how shared meals can foster connection across generations and geographies.

Together, these exhibitions form a cohesive narrative around how art can engage with questions of origin, memory, and cultural inheritance. They challenge linear histories and offer space for more expansive, inclusive understandings of identity and legacy.

The Henry Art Gallery, established in 1927 as Washington’s first art museum, has become nationally recognized for its commitment to contemporary art and social relevance. With a permanent collection of nearly 30,000 objects and a deep partnership with the University of Washington, the Henry serves as both a teaching museum and a dynamic public space for engagement with current issues.

Through exhibitions like these, the museum affirms its role as a site of critical reflection and creative exchange. “Spirit House,” “we leak, we exceed,” and Liu’s mural each contribute to ongoing conversations about the roles of history, language, and lived experience in shaping our collective futures.

To learn more about exhibition dates, programming, and visitor information, visit henryart.org.