Forget what you think you know about — or should expect from — the cultural species known as “hotel art,” traditionally a close relative of “bank lobby” art. The Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara initiated its on again/off again exhibition series of fine art shows worth seeking out and thinking about in the ocean-adjacent property of the Riviera Beach House (formerly known as Hotel Indigo).
The latest example of this happy arrangement, up through March 23, is the lyrical but thematically loaded exhibition Core Memory, by interdisciplinary artist Hương Ngô. The Hong Kong–born Ngô, presently a visiting lecturer at UCSB, comes equipped with a strong and evolving resume, having shown work at MoMA, MASS MoCA, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as in Vietnam and Hong Kong. She has been praised as an important artist dealing with “themes of identity, intersectionality and decolonialization.”
Tellingly, Core Memory, the title of Ngô’s show, refers to a technical term for binary memory storage from before the age of semiconductors. The phrase also lends an implied poetic resonance in artwork linked to the lineage and legacy of her parents and siblings, Southeast Asian refugees who worked on electronics factory assembly lines.