“Go west, young man!” has long served as a rallying cry for adventure, ambition and the occasional cowboy cosplay.

But before it became a pop culture punchline, the phrase cued a serious call to action. Coined in the mid-1800s and widely attributed to (old) white, male newspaper editor Horace Greeley, “go west” was meant to inspire other (young) white men to seek land, reinvention and opportunity in the so-called “unsettled” American frontier.

The slogan helped fuel the mythology of Manifest Destiny and the country’s expansion westward, but it also glossed over the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples and the critical labor of immigrant communities, including the many Asian workers who helped build the railroads and towns that shaped the region.

It’s this more complicated (and frankly more interesting) story that “Go West,” the new group exhibition at the Dairy Arts Center, seeks to reframe. Celebrating AAPI artists in the American West and opening May 16, the group show features contemporary works by 12 Asian American artists, including Agnes Ma, Bala Thiagarajan, Christine Nguyen, Erin Hyunhee Kang, Jenie Gao, Joon Tajadod, Laila Vaziralli, Margaret Kasahara, Maki Teshima, Mattie Hanson, Sammy Seung-min Lee and Taiko Chandler. The group’s creative practices explore identity, migration, cultural inheritance and the search for belonging in Colorado, and the broader Mountain West.

The exhibition was put together by curatorial cartographers Roseline Michael Neveling, an art advisor with a focus on cross-cultural dialogue, and Rajiv Menon, a Los Angeles gallerist whose work centers on spotlighting underrepresented voices.

For New York-based Neveling, reviewing the submissions for this show revealed a common thread: an embrace of multifaceted identities and a refusal to simplify them.

“One of the most striking through-lines was a shift from either/or thinking to both/and,” Neveling said. “There was a time when being AAPI meant choosing — are you more American or more Indian? American or Korean? There was a pressure to simplify, to align with one cultural identity at the expense of another. That binary no longer holds.”

She added: “Today, cultural heritage overlaps and intersects in powerful ways. I am American and I am Indian. These aren’t competing spheres, they’re inextricably linked. That sense of AND-ness ran through so many of the submissions, reflecting the duality of the AAPI experience. I often refer to this as ‘AND art’ — the art of a new diaspora. AND artists no longer choose between cultures; they compose with all of them at once.”

In this exhibition, the American West is reconsidered as a complex and evolving landscape where histories, materials and ideas intersect — not just a backdrop for conquest by white men.

“The American West is not reduced to a singular story or frontier, but continues to be a richly layered space with infinite potential for reimagination and belonging,” Neveling added.

Neveling also noticed how the physical environment of Colorado seemed to echo throughout the work, in both form and feeling.

“Colorado itself, its light, its vastness, its spirit of possibility, seems to find its way into the creative process,” she said. “There is a boldness to these works, a sense that in this place, new ideas can take root and thrive.”

Menon approached the idea of “going west” as something fluid rather than fixed. For him, it wasn’t just a direction or destination, but a framework that continues to evolve.“’Go West’ encapsulates the ongoing search for new lands and ways of living that have defined so many lives,” he said. “For Asian Americans with roots in the East, the West is not merely a destination, but a concept that is being continuously reinterpreted and reimagined.”

While curating the exhibition, Menon was struck by the emotional intensity behind many of the works.

“In the American imagination, the journey West has an epic, sweeping mythology,” he said. “But for many of these artists, ‘going west’ was much more of an emotional journey. It entailed a physical journey, but with that act of migration came a profound transformation of the self.”

That sense of transformation runs through the exhibition. Across the gallery, each piece offers a different lens on movement, memory and reinvention, anchoring big ideas in the physical details of paper, pigment, metal and light.

Christine Nguyen’s cyanotype on indigo fabric captures the silhouettes of wildflowers in ghostlike white. It feels both fleeting and archival, like a prairie memory preserved in light.

In a quietly sharp corner of the gallery, Agnes Ma’s tumbleweed sculpture appears caught mid-motion in a bright green chain-link fence. It evokes movement and interruption, suggesting the borders we hit and the places we drift to when no one’s watching.

Joon Tajadod’s layered floral paintings bring a different kind of complexity, rich with movement and formal play.

“Within the show, Joon Tajadod, for example, combines various art historical techniques to render her unique floral paintings,” said Menon. Clustered together, her canvases become both image and installation, echoing natural forms while questioning how we frame beauty and tradition.

Taiko Chandler’s installation “Practice Makes Perfect” is a wall-sized meditation on language, memory and identity.

Built from her mother’s handwritten calligraphy pages and Chandler’s sculptural monotypes, the piece unfolds as a dialogue between generations — precise yet emotional, and at the same time structured yet organic.

“The work was inspired by my trip home to Japan in 2023 to visit my mother, who was very ill at the time,” Chandler said. “The installation mirrors my sense of belonging and continuously evolving cultural identity (as an immigrant in America).”

Chandler added: “The creative process reminds me that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship — only an investment of energy and emotion that accumulates, just like any attempt to master a skill, such as calligraphy. The core installation is constructed in the shape of a gate or house to evoke the emotional and metaphorical liminal space that signifies both a destination and a journey (from here to there).”

The installation holds the quiet intensity of a personal threshold, shaped by memory, distance and the concentrated effort of making meaning across time.

“If viewers find value in my installation, at any level, or are able to reflect on their own situation or gain new insights, that is immensely satisfying,” she said. “I hope the piece sparks viewers’ visual and emotional curiosity.”

“Go West” doesn’t erase the myth of the American West, but it does nudge Horace Greeley and his wagon full of white men aside to make room for new voices. The exhibition invites viewers to look beyond the frontier fantasy and into the diverse, lived realities that have always shaped the region.

The show opens with a reception from 5-8 p.m. May 16 at the Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, that’s free and open to the public.

Other events linked to the exhibit include a ticketed book launch with author Vauhini Vara from 5-7 p.m. May 17; a ticketed artist talk from 5-8 p.m. June 10; and a film screening on June 23, with details to come. The art exhibit runs through July 14.

More information can be found at thedairy.org.