![]() The gallery founder then used a charming analogy to compare the interplay between an artist’s cultural heritage and exposure to outside influences: “It’s kind of like making a hot pot. ![]() At the same time, she clarified that the Shenzhen-born artist was inspired by something closer to home: the death of his grandfather, and that these abandoned and decaying things reflect daily life and its ephemerality. She described Zhu’s darkly lit still life photographs from his joint exhibition with Liu Zhangbolong, Vanitas/Traces (2015)-which capture images of dead fish, peeled rambutan, and chicken bones-as being reminiscent of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century vanitas paintings from the Netherlands. Courtesy of Fou Gallery.īack in 2017 when I first visited the then-year-old space housed in a Brooklyn brownstone, He walked me through some of the works by the gallery’s artists, including Zhe Zhu. In other words, it doesn’t necessarily involve well-worn emblems like dragons, lions, or what she deems “simple, naïve symbols.” Echo He, a New York transplant from Sichuan and founder of Fou Gallery, believes the younger generation has less of an expectation for what Chinese art is supposed to look like. Still, it is true that artists from Asia live increasingly transnational lives, and by that same token, these migrant artists might be tempted to embrace a more fluid sense of cultural identity. The contemporary art world often celebrates the figure of the international artist, who lives and works between countries in the East and West, while ignoring the class implications of being able to do so. “Globalised” Hot Pot, Transnational Lives Is it possible, here, to recognise a shared aesthetic language that reaffirms identity rather than fetishises it? This essay looks specifically at “yellowness” within the broader spectrum of “Asianness.” In the preface to her book of critical theory, Ornamentalism, Anne Anlin Cheng writes, “I am not so much recuperating 'yellowness' as a gesture of political defiance as I am intent on grasping the genuine dilemma of its political exception.” To apply the racialised word “yellow” is to acknowledge the tendency to lump together East Asian cultures regardless of ethnic or political specificities-a byproduct of dated, Orientalist thinking.Īs a writer who reviews East Asian and diasporic art, my scope here will be focused on the question of “yellow art” in these communities, and how they participate in their own identity-making, regardless of the white, Western gaze. The term “Asian” is also regularly conflated with “East Asian” in America, thus erasing Southeast and South Asian representation. After all, different Asian cultures often already appear interchangeable in the West, while an “Asian” identity is sometimes used to stereotype artists and their work. Is there such a thing as an “Asian aesthetic”? The question has preoccupied me for some time now, but I worry that by entertaining the possibility, I’m only furthering racist generalisations about artists of Asian descent. Mimi Wong explores the slippery notion of an "Asian aesthetic," and the many ways it can manifest in East Asian and diasporic art. ![]()
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