Same Same but Different.

Alexander Ugay

Rachel Youn

Chang Yuchen

The Here & There Collective (THAT Co.) is excited to launch their inaugural curatorial commission, Room for Error, for an emerging curator who self-identifies as part of the Asian diaspora. Focusing on early-career curators based in the New York City region, THAT Co. invites eligible individuals to propose curatorial projects requiring a physical space, including an exhibition, series of performances, and/or workshops, and more. The title of this program reflects its preliminary nature: both as a project for the chosen curator, as well as for THAT Co. This is an opportunity to bring to life something fun, strange, difficult-to-explain, and not-yet (maybe, not-ever) air tight.

The curator-in-residence chosen for 2025 is Riley Yuen. Her exhibition Same Same but Different (November 19 - December 19, 2025) features the work of Alexander Ugay, Chang Yuchen, and Rachel Youn, examining tensions between repetition’s constancy and failure’s inevitability.The title borrows from Colloquial Singaporean English (Singlish), which is an English-based creole language. This phrase, “same same but different,” embodies Singlish’s musicality and refusal to conform to the rules of so-called proper English. In essence, the failure to be correct, through the erroneous repeating of “same,” becomes an enduring form of expression.

Through the work of Alexander Ugay, Chang Yuchen, and Rachel Youn, Same Same but Different uses the language of failure to subvert the moralizing judgement and dissatisfaction that often accompanies the word. However, the artworks also resist tired efforts to romanticize failure as a stepping stone to success, embodied in phrases like “failure is the mother of success” or “fail forwards.” This exhibition asks: when the repetition that undergirds our daily lives fails or falters, what is left behind? What happens when the space between intention and realization ruptures? The artists in this exhibition play with repetition, as material, medium, movement, and method in the form of video, kinetic sculptures and works on paper. Interrogating issues of (re)memory, authenticity, value production, and translation, the artworks ask us to question the ways that repetition frames our daily lives and how it constantly fails. And then they ask us to try and do it again.

Chang Yuchen (b. 1989, China) works in a disciplinary manner — writing as weaving, drawing as translation, teaching as hospitality, commerce as social experiment and publishing as a dandelion spreading its seed. She has exhibited and performed her work at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Beijing Commune; By Art Matters, Hangzhou; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Amant Foundation, New York; Artists Space, New York; UCCA Dune, Beidaihe; Para Site, Hong Kong; and Taikwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; among others.

Alexander Ugay (b. 1978, Kazakhstan), a third-generation Koryoin (ethnic Korean in the former Soviet Union), uses photography, video, and collage to document stories about individuals and groups, migration histories, nostalgia originating in past experience, and places where past and future exist. He has exhibited at Aspan Gallery, Almaty; Galleria Labirynt, Lublin; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Albertina Museum, Vienna; the 6th Moscow Biennale; Busan Biennial 2022; 52nd Venice Biennale; and the 1st New Museum Triennial, New York; among others.

Rachel Youn (b. 1994, U.S.) is an artist working across sculpture and installation whose work identifies with the replica that earnestly desires to be real, and the failed object that simulates care and intimacy. They have exhibited at Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Wave Hill, New York; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Sargent’s Daughters, New York; Hair + Nails, Minneapolis; the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis; Soy Capitán, Berlin; and G Gallery, Seoul; among others.

Riley Yuen is a New York based curator who specializes in contemporary art with interests in Southeast Asia and Asian diasporic art. She recently completed her MA in Art History at the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and a curatorial fellowship at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA). Her most recent curatorial project on the politics of disgust is on view at MASS MoCA until December 2025.

Founded in 2021 by Steven Abraham and Lisa Young, THAT Co. was born out of a series of studio visits over the pandemic. The collective aims to chronicle Asian-diasporic artists on a platform that is readily accessible to all people, building one of the largest public online archives of Asian-diasporic practitioners. THAT Co. has stayed committed to uplifting and connecting not just artists, but also curators and other art professionals from the Asian diaspora with the purpose to build a lasting community.

Led by Hannah Pierce and Isobel Chiang, Small Editions is a design studio and artist book publisher. Through their independent publishing imprint, they collaborate with artists to create unique, limited edition artist books. Small Editions aims to center the book as a form of art, rather than a vehicle for art. Projects begin from a thoughtful engagement with source content, and are informed by ongoing research and experimentation in print, materiality, and fabrication. The studio has lectured and taught workshops at Yale School of Art, Princeton University, and Pratt Institute, among others.