{"id":25583,"date":"2023-05-12T14:11:26","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T18:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=25583"},"modified":"2023-05-16T18:41:12","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T22:41:12","slug":"kevin-kao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/kevin-kao\/","title":{"rendered":"Art professor\u2019s work reflects his Asian American experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

AAPI Heritage Month at Furman<\/a>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

At a Furman Forward<\/a> event that brought accepted students to campus in late March, one father approached Kevin Kao, an assistant professor of art, and immediately asked, \u201cIs this a safe place?\u201d \u2013 in Mandarin Chinese.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very Chinese thing to do,\u201d laughed Kao from his office in the Roe Art Building near the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. \u201cFind the closest Asian person and just straight-up ask them, right?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Kao, who was born and raised in southern California as a child of Taiwanese immigrants, understood the father\u2019s language \u2013 and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI saw so much of my own parents,\u201d he said. \u201cAs an immigrant, you do fear so many things, and you want to protect your children. You want them to go somewhere where they can be around others like them. And you\u2019re not even sure what a small liberal arts and sciences university is all about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Kao candidly told the concerned parent that <\/span>\u201cthough the University is predominantly white, I have found it to be so welcoming,\u201d he said. \u201cFurman tries its best to be inclusive of a lot of different viewpoints.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Connecting and unpacking<\/h3>\n

Although the community of students, faculty and staff who share Asian or Pacific Island heritage is small, \u201cwe try to connect with each other,\u201d said Kao.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had some of the best conversations about what it means to be Asian American with my students,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can be really difficult sometimes. If you come from an immigrant background, you often have this expectation that you have to do very, very well, and I relate to that so much. We\u2019re trying to unpack this together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the Asian and Asian American students Kao encounters are studying the sciences, he said \u2013 something else he can relate to, having earned a B.S. in biology from the University of California San Diego, where he studied ecology, evolution and animal behavior. He brings some of that scientific interest to his clay sculptures, which he has shown in exhibits across the country. This month, Kao will join Ashley Morris, a professor of biology, in teaching a May Experience course, \u201cNature in Art: Botanical Form and Function in Clay.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at natural forms of plant life and how it affects the containers they\u2019re in,\u201d he said, \u201cbut also how the containers can affect the plants, too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Identity and duality<\/h3>\n

Kao\u2019s sculptures<\/a> feature human figures illuminating themes of identity, perception and duality; one ceramic piece depicts one head with two faces facing opposite directions. Another motif is assimilation, an experience Kao said he shared with many other Asian Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re growing up the child of immigrants, it\u2019s important to assimilate, because they view it as the one path for success,\u201d he said. \u201cI remember very distinctly my parents saying, \u2018When you\u2019re at school, try to be as American as possible.\u2019 But at home, we were very much Chinese.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the liberal arts and sciences model might have been unfamiliar to the father Kao met at Furman Forward, the professor sees definite advantages for his students.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI try to tell them about the fortitude that they\u2019ve learned here, their ability to be adaptable, their holistic well-being here,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Furman student is so much more prepared to talk with other people, to acknowledge their own strengths and weaknesses, to really reflect and to build on that to make this world a better place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During AAPI Heritage Month, Kevin Kao, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, encourages students to explore identity, perception and duality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":25586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,70,61,30],"tags":[2089],"class_list":["post-25583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-stories","tag-aapi-heritage-month-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}