Art & Party

Mars 17, 2022 

Art & Party Event organized by MCC GALLERY, as part of the solo exhibition "VISITE" by Amine El Gotaibi.

 

Presentation by curator Kóan Jeff Baysa

Music by Diese Mbangue

Culinary Performance by Chef Marouane Dekaoui 

 


 

Kóan Jeff Baysa was born and raised in Hawai’i, and completed his medical studies at UC San Francisco. Licensed to practice medicine in Hawai’i, California, and New York, he helped organize KKV and Third Arm, grass roots community clinics in Hawai’i serving immigrant and indigent communities. Dr. Baysa was the Allergy and Clinical Immunology Specialist for the Oak Hill Medical Group in the SF Bay Area, California, and established Medical Arts Enhanced Care, a clinic in Lower Manhattan in New York that provided free and at-cost care to artists without medical insurance.

 

He has volunteered in clinics serving Native Americans in New Mexico, at LBJ Medical Center in Pago Pago in American Samoa, Apia General Hospital in Western Samoa, and Valemahaki Hospital in Nuku’alofa in the Kingdom of Tonga. He has participated in medical missions in conflict zones: assessing community asthma and elder-care program needs in Tuzla, Bosnia and assisting in health and culture programs for adults and students in the refugee camps of Beirut, Lebanon. His current practice bridges medical culture and social sculpture, includes clinical research in the neuroscience of memory and olfaction, human sensory perception and misperception, neurodiversity, and the cultural constructs of health, disease, and aesthetics. An upcoming exhibition and catalog essay address the health sequelae of Pacific native peoples exposed to radiation from nuclear testing. He is frequently invited as a critic-in-residence to art programs.

 

Dr. Baysa is a member of the Association of International Art Critics (AICA) and an alumnus of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (ISP). His positions include Chief Medical Officer – Medical Avatar; Co-founder – Joshua Treenial; Senior Founder – Honolulu Biennial; Director – iBiennale; Program Board Advisor – Art Omi; Cultural Advisor – World Council of Peoples for the United Nations; Alumnus – Advisory Committee of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics; Cultural Agent – Curators Network; International Advisor – Dag Hammarskjold Plaza; Advisory Board – Kaus Australis, Rotterdam.

 

A Ford Foundation grantee asked to survey contemporary art in Vietnam, he has curated exhibitions in China, Japan, Chile, Croatia, Mexico, Korea, Austria, Canada, Ireland, England, Ukraine, Holland, United Arab Emirates, and throughout the US. The Pacific Editor for d’Art International, he has lectured at the United Nations, MoMA, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum, Phillips Collection, Hanoi University of Culture, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University. Dr. Baysa is the Curatorial Advisor for Young Congo Biennale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and for Fresh Winds Biennale in Iceland, and divides his time between Honolulu, New York, and Los Angeles.