Oscar yi Hou’s layered, figurative paintings both capture intimate personal relationships and sift through cultural histories. The subjects of his portraits—typically friends, fellow artists, or the artist himself—are situated within webs of symbols that gesture to the complex intersections of queer, Asian diasporic, and American identity. In 2022, yi Hou made his solo museum debut at the Brooklyn Museum, becoming one of the youngest artists to mount a solo show at a major New York institution. His work has been collected by the New York Historical Society, the ICA Miami, and more. Comprising poetry as well as painting, yi Hou’s relational practice is informed by poet Frank O’Hara’s theory of personism, which proposes that art is fundamentally a form of address between two people.