Chuna Chugay: Chin to Eye
Paintings and graphics by a Koryo-Saram artist
On View May 8th — June 5th 2026 at 368 E 8th Street
Opening Reception Friday May 8th, 6-8pm
Allied Productions proudly presents Chin to Eye, a solo exhibition at our 8th Street Studio featuring recent works in painting and graphic narrative by Chuna Chugay. Chugay’s first collaboration with Allied, as well as their first solo exhibition in New York, comes after their participation in a 4-week residency at the Vermont Studio Center and includes works produced there. Chin to Eye offers a checkpoint for reflection on Chugay’s ongoing projects addressing the history of the Koryo-Saram diaspora and its reverberations in their own life.
“I did not know the name of my diaspora, ‘Koryo-Saram’ until I was an adult. In the early fall of 1937, Stalin’s regime forcibly deported 175,000 Koreans that lived in the Russian far East, including members of my family, to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and dropped them off in barren fields. Under the pretext of national security, Koryo-Saram were prohibited from practicing their language Koryo-Mar, returning to their lands, or talking about the crimes the government committed against them.” Now, almost 90 years later, Chugay has built a creative practice, grounded in academic research and an oral history project, to understand their family history, as vital context for their childhood in Moscow and immigration to the US.
Chin to Eye pairs Chugay’s recent series of expansive portraits with pages from their upcoming graphic novel, That Same Wind, and invites visitors to settle between narratively continuous and fragmented moments. Across projects, Chugay’s lines connect, twirl, pucker, glow, commune and cut each other off. Whatever their action or character, they buzz with the same sure finality of life proceeding.
As the rising fascist regime in the United States increasingly weaponizes racially motivated forced deportation by ICE, it is more vital than ever to look at the histories of communities who have survived displacement and whose lived experiences provide insight into the intergenerational aftermath of state violence.
Chin to Eye is organized and produced by Grace Muller, whose own practice in drawing, performance, and installation grounds her work as on this project. As an archival assistant at Allied, she participates in the stewardship and future planning of the organization’s archival holdings. Muller also hosts the weekly radio show Lilypad with DJ Leggings and contributes to the hospice care of her great aunt, two ongoing sources of playfulness, creative connection, and joy in her life. Her partnership with Chugay on this exhibition is born from their friendship and mutual trust.
Chuna Chugay, That Same Wind, panel detail