A Conversation with Pallavi Surana and Maia Chao

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.