Group Show: After Hours

2025/07/19- 2025/08/02

Artists:
Ashley Deng, Bonnie Zhou, Chang Liu, Eileen Ramos, Eliane Yeung, Five Ghosts, Geyang Chang, He Miao, Jazbel Wang, Jimmy Zhao, Jingsong Yu, Justin Ma, MingLei, Mingna Li, Ningxia Zhang, Noelle Payongayong, Peiyuan Zhang, Reconnected Outsiders, Savannah Wu, Sharon Yalan Li, Shuang Cai, Siqin Bian, Tinghao Duncan Wang, Trang Doan, Wisteria Deng, Xinhao Yang, Yejia Sun, Yiran Zhou, Zihan Shao, Zinong Li



Curated by: 
Jiaoyang Li, Colleen Dalusong, Aurora Chen


For the self-taught. For those working in the mundane. For those who start late. For those who create in the margins.
Accent Accent invites submissions for “After Hours”, a July exhibition dedicated to self-taught artists—those who never went to art school, who never received formal training, who work in industries that may seem distant from art but still feel compelled to create.

This exhibition is held in memory of a beloved friend and former staff member of Accent Accent. By day, she was an engineer at Amazon; by night, she was a poet—one of many who make art in the quiet, in-between spaces of life. This show is for artists like her: the insurance analyst who sketches on lunch breaks, the data entry worker who writes poetry on the subway, the chemist who sculpts in secret.

Only in hindsight did we come to understand how vital Echo was to our community—not just as a friend, but as an artist, a writer. She showed up at late-night readings and impromptu gatherings, loved going to Metrograph, searching for fragments of herself in films, and wrote beautiful poems in secret, never seeking recognition but always deserving it.

This exhibition is for her and for all those like her—those who create in the margins, who write beyond their daily lives, and whose voices deserve to be heard. We are looking for work that reflects this duality of existence—living one life while making art for another. There is no requirement to engage with science or technology in your work. What matters is that your background is outside the art world, and your day job might be somewhere monotonous, corporate, technical, or far from creative industries. This is a space for those who create despite it all.