Detail: A major exhibition that transforms USC Pacific Asia Museum into an immersive journey through myth and the immigrant story, Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry is sweeping in scale and deeply personal in tone, its narrative written in verse in a voice evocative of a wise elder to a loved one. The exhibition draws approximately 100 objects from USC PAM’s significant collection—which spans more than 5,000 years and includes art from East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, and the Pacific Islands and their diasporas— blending them with new media technology and works by more than 20 contemporary artists, including several commissions. The result is an interdisciplinary experience in which visitors engage with the past not only through didactic explanation, but through creative activations of pan-Asian mythology that ignite feeling and memory.

Contemporary artists represented include Dinh Q. Lê, Lily Honglei, Wendy Park, Momoko Schafer, Kyungmi Shin, Sanjay Vora, and Lauren YS.