Being Human

Works by Maryam Ashkaboosi, Yoona Ban, Tyler Haws, Caroline Trotter, Jiatong Yao

Curated by Zach Nguyen

August 1 - September 28, 2024

Program Gallery

Curator’s Statement

 In this era of technological advancement, the nature of our relationship with technology becomes deeply intertwined with our personal sense of self as well as our collective understanding of what it means to be human. Being Human is an alternative world that invites the audience to explore the complex interplay between personhood and the ever-evolving sphere of technology. The exhibition transcends the conventional realms of art and becomes a dynamic dialog between the artist and the audience, between the human and the technology, and between the past and the future.

The curator, Zack Nguyen, brings together a group of artists—Maryam Ashkaboosi, Yoona Bang, Tyler Haws, Caroline Trotter and Jiatong Yao—who harness the power of technology to breathe new life into their methods of artistic expression. Through the utilization of various mediums, the artists invite the audience to not only reflect on the past and embrace the present but also to envisage and shape the future—the one in which the lines between human and machine are beautifully and sometimes unsettlingly blurred.

Artist Bios

Maryam Ashkaboosi

Maryam Ashkaboosi is an interactive artist exploring the intersections between humans, technology, and science. Her practice focuses on how technology transforms interactive art and studio practices, engaging in making-led inquiries into the nature and creation of interactive art. She is deeply passionate about interactive art, programming, UX/UI design, and sound art. Her work aims to create solutions that are accessible to all, drawing on insights from her academic experiences.In her free time, she plays Mafia and chess—because why not be both a mastermind and a grandmaster?

Yoona Bang

Yoona (b. 2002, Los Angeles, California) is a cyberfeminist multimedia artist. Her artistic practice exists in the liminal space between cyberspace and the offline world—a framework through which to remediate and recontexualize her lived experiences and the ever-shifting contexts of her Korean American identity. As a “digital nomad” and cyberethnographer of sorts, Yoona often experiments with code, the body, poetry, and alternative modes of performance. Her current research interests lie in the tactility of images (images as object, as material), memes as cultural + political phenomena, manifestations of Western hegemony online, defining an anti-imperialist Internet practice, and other autoethnographic areas of contention.

Tyler Haws

Tyler Haws is a multimedia artist based in Dallas, Texas. Tyler’s work explores the representation of reality in art through audio recordings, image manipulation, and physical structures. He uses software like ProTools, Logic Pro, Adobe Suite, and Ableton to edit sounds and visuals into something that can convey different scenarios, like edited sounds that convey a separate idea than what you would expect. He graduated from the Stetson University Digital Arts Program where he was a teaching assistant for multiple undergrad classes and regularly had collaborations with other artists. Most recently he graduated with his MFA from The University of Texas at Dallas with a focus on creative practice. He is currently showing and creating work for use in gallery exhibitions and live events throughout north Texas.

Caroline Trotter

Caroline Trotter is a sound artist from Tyler, Texas. She graduated summa cum laude from The University of Texas at Dallas with a Bachelor of Arts in Design & Production. She recently received her MFA in Creative Practice from UTD in the school of Arts, Humanities, and Technology. Trotter prioritizes sound as it relates to a physical space and thus primarily presents her work through installation and live performance. Caroline is a classically trained vocalist turned experimental – standing on the shoulders of her traditional background to push boundaries. Since middle school, Caroline has been obsessed with robots and artificial intelligence. Consequently, most of her work is produced through the lens of technology to amplify her internal dialogues. Within the performative aspects of her work, she masters the balance of a human yet not-human singing voice, using it to put on display the internal self-interrogation that usually plagues her mind.

Jiatong Yao

With a background in fine arts and computer science, Jiatong Yao hones her skills in programming, digital art, and multimedia installations. She works with a variety of digital tools, including game engines, virtual reality, and augmented reality technology, to create interactive installations that engage viewers. Through her works, she invites the audience to explore new forms of creative expression. Her recent independent or collaborative works were exhibited at Arts Fort Worth, Dallas AT&T Performing Arts Center, Culture Hub Re-Fest and Digital Fashion Week.

Zack Nguyen

Zack Nguyen is a hybrid artist, educator and independent curator based in Dallas, Texas.  He embraces the power of art and healing through a variety of media. As an artist, his body of work expands to include silk painting, participatory installation, interactive art, creative coding, performance, and photography. As a curator, Nguyen cultivates meaningful dialogues between art, technology, and humanity through installations and performances. Through his curation, he discovers many Dallas-based emerging artists who reflect, critique, engage, provoke thoughts, and challenge perceptions on the complexities of our relationship with technology, and themes of identity, surveillance, artificial intelligence, and other-than-human existence.

Zack currently works as a user experience web designer, and an adjunct professor at the school of Creative Arts, Entertainment and Design at Dallas College. He has educational background in art, product design and psychology from The University of Texas at Dallas, and global entrepreneurship from University of California, Los Angeles.