Explicit!!!

Reception Friday, Apr 25 from 6-8p

Cuchifritos Gallery is very pleased to present Explicit!!!, featuring new work by NYC-based artist Sue Jeong Ka on view from April 25 through June 21, 2025.

Explicit!!! builds on Ka’s ongoing investigation of the censorship practices within the U.S. carceral system, focusing on publication bans across 26 states. Through her research, Ka reveals how book censorship operates as a tool of racial, sexual, and cultural control. She illuminates biases that specifically target works by marginalized authors, especially those presenting sexually liberal narratives or culturally non-Western perspectives.

For this exhibition, AAI LES Studio Program alum (2023) Ka presents a series of site-responsive works, including kinetic sculptures, large-scale wall installations, and a public program series that fosters vibrant dialogue among artists, researchers, and community members in the Lower East Side and Chinatown. These works invite visitors to reflect not only on prison censorship but also on the broader patterns of content suppression in public education and cultural institutions—systems intricately intertwined with the policing of racial and sexual knowledge.

The core of Explicit!!! is Ka’s data analysis of manga—a genre of comics and graphic novels predominantly created by East Asian artists. Across various state prison systems, manga is frequently classified as “sexually explicit,” leading to its prohibition in prison libraries and preventing its distribution to incarcerated readers. In parallel, New York City public schools have removed manga titles like “Assassination Classroom,” citing moral concerns regarding their content. These acts of censorship—whether in prisons or schools—are not isolated incidents; they embody a broader infrastructure that dictates which stories are acceptable and whose cultural expressions are silenced.