Biography

Homer Shew (b. 1990, Chicago) is a New York-based painter whose portraits of Asian Americans interrogate the tensions between cultural visibility and erasure. A 2012 graduate of Bard College, Shew has, since 2015, focused on subjects his father once deemed "improper for oil painting"—the Asian Diaspora. His work embraces the contradictions between the exoticized fantasies projected onto Asia, Asians and Asian communities with the lived realities of the fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. Across generations and geographies, Shew's portraits weave historical texture into contemporary discourse, celebrating those who navigate the seismic pressures to identify something yet unknown about America.

Shew's 2023 Hong Kong exhibition, Meanwhile, epitomizes his practice: intimate, texturally rich, and charged with emotional sincerity, the portraits reject alienation in favor of deep connection. The series, which he envisions as a lifelong project, aspires to depict every Asian American he encounters—not as symbols of racial conflict, but as full participants in the broader human condition.

Central to Shew's process is a personal or intellectual bond with his subjects. His sitters—friends, mentors, strangers, and cultural figures like Pulitzer-winning writer Hua Hsu (Stay True) and critic Jia Tolentino (Trick Mirror)—are rendered with a specificity that undoes the prosopagnosia of stereotyping. Whether painted from life or photographs, their faces resist reduction, inviting scrutiny and empathy. Even well-known figures, like fashion designer Brandon Blackwood or curator Herb Tam (MOCA NYC), are grounded in the familiar, their environments quotidian yet charged with quiet significance.

Art and anthropology are similar projects. Both claim to approach the absolute particular, to understand its unique integrity, and by doing so, to speak to the universal—since both are, at root, about defining what is ultimately human. Shew's portraits operate at this intersection: each face, each story, becomes an act of witness. In depicting Asian Americans not as types but as individuals—flawed, vivid, and irreducible—his work asserts that to see one person clearly is to glimpse the whole.

1990

Born in Chicago, IL

Education:

2012

BA Studio Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Leon Levy Scholar

Selected exhibitions:

2025

Seizan Gallery, New York, NY, Life Studies

2024

Kiang Malingue Gallery, Basel, Switzerland, Art Basel Hong Kong 2024

Manchester Public Library, Manchester, VT, Responses: Asian American Voices Resisting the Tide of Racism (Curated by Herb Tam and Andrew Rebatta) [Traveling show]

Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline, MA, See and Be Seen 2.0

2023

Kiang Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, HK, Meanwhile (Solo)

Kiang Malingue Gallery, Basel, Switzerland, Art Basel 2023

Kiang Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, HK, Art Basel Hong Kong 2023

Seizan Gallery, New York, NY, Fluid Places

2022

Kiang Malingue Gallery, Shanghai, China, West Bund Art and Design 2022

Schacky Art & Advisory, Dusseldorf, Germany, The Political Everyday

Kiang Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, HK, Art Basel Hong Kong 2022

2021

Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, HK, Backgrounds (Solo)

Museum of Chinese in America, New York, NY, Responses: Asian American Voices Resisting the Tide of Racism (Curated by Herb Tam and Andrew Rebatta)

2019

CP Project Space at SVA, New York, NY, Dear America (Curated by Minji Lee)

2018

NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY, Practice: in Progress (Curated by Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen)

Amphora Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 5/11

2017

384 Broadway ChaShaMa, New York, NY, The Inscrutable Chinese [Solo]

2016

The Silent Barn, Brooklyn, NY, #OPENAGAIN

2015

Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, The Bridge Show

2012

Fisher Studio Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Crags of My Father [Solo]

2023

Chak, Ashlyn, Chinese artists in America explore feelings of displacement in solo exhibitions in Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, November 14th

2022

Brown, Jeffrey, Architect Maya Lin helps a museum tell the larger story of Asian Americans, PBS Newshour, May 31

Studio Visit Magazine, Issue 49, May 27

2021

Morabito, Jeffrey, Homer Shew: I am Legitimately Living a Double Life, I Know Strange People, July 20

Teresa Xie and Sam Fleming, Episode #51 Lavender Tea and Homer an Interview with Homer Shew, Two Virgins, July 20

2019

Guzman, Alissa, A Wide Spectrum of Ideas and Artist Studios in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, Hyperallergic, October 21st

2017

Laoshi, Stone, The Inscrutable Chinese, SInoVision, November 22nd

Hickey, Christopher. Homer Shew-The Inscrutable Chinese, CUNY School of Journalism December 1st

Pierone, Xana Silent Barn: Jordan Michael Iannucci, Rare Candy, May 10th

Residencies:

2022

Vermont Studio Center, Johnson,VT

2021

Millay Arts, Austerlitz, NY

2016-2018

Silent Barn, Resident Member, New York, NY

2017

Camp Residency, Preston Ranch, WY

2015

Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL