Project for Empty Space is delighted to present The Ocean Doesn’t Recognize Tears, a solo exhibition by 2024 - 2025 Artist In Residence Andrea Chung at the PES Ironside Newark location from May 6, 2025, through August 17, 2025. A reception was held on Saturday, May 17th, in conjunction with Helina Metaferia’s When Civilizations Heal. 

Born in Newark, Chung’s exhibition explores questions of heritage, familial love, and parenting within a larger autobiographical context. 

Chung’s use of actively dissolving sugar that she casts into intricate sculptures pays homage to the Caribbean’s most popular product export during slavery, more specifically through the Atlantic Slave Trade. Chung’s work is research-heavy, diving into patterns and themes that have shown up throughout history at this time; migration involving perishable and precious materials, post-colonial countries, and the human body.

In addition to the rich history she is researching, the artist's work dances along the lines of vulnerability and shared experience as she takes the audience through the relationship between colonization and its impacts on child-rearing. As a first-generation immigrant with her own generational curses to break, Chung explores themes of parenting, nurture vs. nature, and tradition. The work is intrinsically reflective, exploring the complicated relationship dynamic she has with her Caribbean father, which in turn impacted her approach to motherhood.

Chung presents intricate, labor-intensive objects that disrupt traditional perspectives on race, gender, bodily autonomy, and historical archives.