artXchange gallery
A Tale of New Cultures
American/Asian
A Tale of New Cultures
American/Asian
ARTXCHANGE GALLERY MAY 7 - JUNE 27, 2009 Heritage, disorientation, equilibrium, transplant, clash, freedom are some of the conflicting directives investigated in American/Asian: A Tale of New Cultures, an exhibition that honors national Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month. ArtXchange Gallery presents the work of 13 regional artists that tells the tale of how each embraces his or her own identity as an APA in the Pacific Northwest. Participating artists include: MalPina Chan, Jonathan Wakuda Fischer, Deborah Kapoor, Tenzin Mingyur Paldron, Chiyo Sanada, June Sekiguchi, Arun Sharma, Judy Shintani, William Song, Joseph Songco, Barry Wong, Dean Wong and Frederic Wong.
Credits: Cover images: “Kabuki MC (Blue)” by J. Fischer, “Sabina” by J. Songco, “Bok Choy on Red Lacquer “ by B. Wong, “Canton Alley #4” by D. Wong and “Another Way to Wrap Five Eggs” by J. Sekiguchi Design: Islanda Khau, Gallery Designer © 2009 ArtXchange Gallery No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent from ArtXchange.
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MalPina Chan
LIKE A NIGHTINGALE (detail) 2007 | 6” x 10” x 0” monoprint on rives bfk The nightingale with its sweet nocturnal song is a metaphor for hope and a new day.
BELOW HEAVEN (detail) 2008 | 12” x 12” x 2” monoprint on rives bfk & on board, chine colle & collage The figure of a young girl represents innocence, courage, and survival. The text, derived from an old Chinese dictionary, features a diagram of the solar system. The design from an old fan inspired the background imagery.
ARTIST STATEMENT As an artist working in mixed-media, I layer patterns, pictographs, cultural icons, photographs, and text with varying degrees of opacity exploring the perception of life and the transitory nature of the human condition. The immigrant experience—balancing assimilation along with struggles to preserve tradition - inspires much of my work as I explore the human journey by careful juxtaposition of metaphoric images and materials. Symbolism and metaphors inform the framework for my visual language creating pieces synthesizing memory and history. artxchange gallery | www.artxchange.org
Jonathan Wakuda Fischer
ARTIST STATEMENT Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the transient world of everyday life,” was pop art that existed long before any modern artistic movement. At the height of its popularity in the 18th century, these Japanese woodblock prints portrayed a new urban lifestyle available to the growing middle class. As an homage to the spirit of Ukiyo-e, my work incorporates these same elements of beauty, fashion and leisure with a fusion of anachronistic content. I combine latter 20th century technology with the ancient style of woodblock as a way to create something new from two obsolete artifacts from history. “Japonisme,” or the fascination with Ukiyo-e in 19th Century Europe, occurred when the art form was actually declining in Japan. Ironically, new technologies imported from the West, such as the photograph, helped to speed this decline. It is amazing to me that such a long standing, traditional art form could be rendered obsolete in the space of a few decades that I feel including similarly outdated elements is extremely fitting in both content and style.
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While the content may be of a historical nature, the technique in creating the art is purely a modern one. Elements of color layering and reproduction were the initial attractions for using stencils and spray paint to emulate Ukiyo-e, but any similarities end there. After perfecting my technique in basic stenciling, I have since moved on to a more ‘painterly’ approach in which I strive to make every work distinctly unique. In this way I’m trying to bridge the gap between the uniformly reproduced arts and completely individual pieces. My art contains duality on several levels: between East and West, past and (near) present, and the very style of the art and the technique used to create it. Our culture does not place much value on what has become obsolete, but there is much to learn from what has come before and the possibility to reclaim some things that have been lost. By connecting different stylistic elements of the past with a modern technique, I hope to create dynamic art that is transcendent of any particular time or place in history.
Jonathan Wakuda Fischer
clockwise: CELLULAR (detail) 2007 | 40” x 30” spray paint and stencils NINETEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT (detail) 2007 | 30” x 24” spray paint and stencils KOI 2007 | 18” x 24” spray paint and stencils artxchange gallery | www.artxchange.org
Taj Walkers (detail) 2007 | 12” x 13” x 1” encaustic, paper on wood
Deborah Kapoor
My son Asim learned to take his first steps while we were visiting the Taj Mahal. I will never forget the sight of his little legs wobbling along the incredible patterned floors.
ARTIST STATEMENT My own migration from Chicago to Seattle with my Indian husband is a living model of what it means to transplant oneself into a new landscape and culture. How do I, as an artist, living in the Pacific Northwest, help my ½ Indian, ½ American son define who he is? How does that translate into a life? How do I in turn define myself? My investigations grapple with these questions. With our young
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son, we are a hybrid organism, navigating our way through the local experience of the Northwest. Together we mesh my husband’s eastern upbringing with our life in the west. Perhaps the vast innovation in the technical arena that has come out of this part of the world makes us want to touch and feel things… maybe it is mere inspiration from the lush beauty that surrounds us. In my work, I concentrate on evoking the senses— how one interprets the world through sight, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. I work in a very physical medium, fusing together layers of hot wax with a small torch. I often use the circle as an image which embodies these physical and cultural experiences…the circle exemplifies nature—the life-cycle— and is a metaphor for common blessings and prayer. Ultimately, I think I am searching for conduits—to discover the sensory and spirit interconnectedness of eastern and western worlds. In doing so, I can contribute to the larger, global dialogue between cultures. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I look for ways to sow this hybrid experience into my home.
Rice Dreams 2008 | 15” x 23” encaustic on rice bags, silver leaf & paper
Deborah Kapoor
The taste of what nourishes our bodies offers a kind of daily celebration with our senses. How do you explain to a four-year old where food comes from? I grow edibles in my garden to teach my son that food grows in the ground, not at the grocery store.
Thanks, Sarasvati (for Asim) 2007 | 12” x 5” x 3” encaustic , burned text, wood My hope is for my son to have the gift of speaking Hindi. This work thanks the goddess Sarasvati for inventing language and making it available to my son, Asim. artxchange gallery | www.artxchange.org
Tenzin Mingyur Paldron
Q&A: Ramifications of Identity 2008 | film/dvd A documentary produced in 2008 interviews Asians and Pacific Islanders identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer. An undergraduate senior project conceived of in 2004, the film developed from an educational social justice piece to a project aimed at providing visibility of queer APIs to one another and an exploration of queer people of color theory. Given the minimal media available for and about queer APIs and queer people of color in general, the film can hopefully contribute to discussions around immigration, diaspora, gender, and sexuality.
Still Images: (top) Dalya Perez, Academic Advisor, The Evergreen State College, (bottom) Chandan Reddy, Professor, University of Washington
ARTIST STATEMENT Tenzin Mingyur Paldron is a filmmaker and media educator who graduated from The Evergreen State College in 2008 with a BA in documentary film, philosophy and cultural studies. The focus of Tenzin’s work is to encourage a discussion on the ramifications of identity, both personally and socially, through an exploration of identities and the experiences attached to them, and what can be learned from these experiences.
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Chiyo Sanada
EN (CONNECTIONS) 167” x 31” ink on textile
Roots (left: full image, right: detail) 180” x 31” ink on textile
ARTIST STATEMENT Chiyo Sanada, a Lacey, Washington resident, was born and raised in Hiroshima, Japan. She has studied Japanese calligraphy since she was seven years old, and started teaching calligraphy (Shodo) after graduating from Hiroshima Bunkyo Women's University in 1995 with a degree in Japanese & Chinese calligraphy. Following her arrival in the United States in 2000, she began integrating the art of calligraphy into and in conjunction with other art forms. She has created art pieces as a part of performances with taiko drumming, Marimba and Koto music. These creations are designed to reflect and expand on the activities of the other performers. She approaches each design by incorporating the meaning of the "kanji" into the picture, colors and strokes. In some cases she has opted for a literal translation of the word, while in others she has combined characters to create a new expression. artxchange gallery | www.artxchange.org
June Sekiguchi
Another Way to Wrap Five Eggs 2009 | 48” x 24” x 24” spray enamel on scroll cut wood, 5 plaster orbs
ARTIST STATEMENT I was born and raised in Arkansas in the ‘60s and ‘70s where being Japanese was something to be endured rather than feeling pride. I moved to the San Francisco Bay
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Area at 16 as soon as I could manage life on my own to escape the Southern mentality toward minorities. There were five children in my family born in six years. Within our family we each perceived our experiences in very different ways and on our own, not really sharing the burden of our separation from the mainstream. One of the first and most influential books I came across as I was discovering a pride in my Japanese heritage was “How to Wrap Five Eggs” by Hideyuki Oka with photography by Michikazu Sakai. There is an aesthetic that permeates the Japanese culture to the extent that something as quotidian as eggs is worthy of a level of beautiful and functional design. The container is peripheral to the product that it so artfully contains, yet it holds an integral relationship to the object. It is the skin that contains the content and becomes a deserving entity in itself. Much like skin and skeleton are the packaging of our human selves, it contains the soul of person. In my sculpture, the large blue cage is the structure which holds five orbs representing my siblings; eggs separated from the world and each other yet forever bound to one another.
Arun Sharma
Fracture Series sizes vary |celadon & amber celadon on porcelain
ARTIST STATEMENT When making functional pottery I tend to only use porcelain and two different celadon glazes. I am attracted to porcelain because of its smooth, sensuous feel, along with its white vitrified surface. The two glazes I use, celadon and amber celadon, have so many variations that I never tire or cease to be surprised by the results. I am particularly interested in making teabowls because it is a functional form that is placed on one’s lips. It is that kind of intimacy that compels me to continue exploring the teabowl.
The pieces that you see come from the Fracture Series. These soda fired teabowls are porcelain with an amber celadon glaze. They are good examples of my attempt of taking the Japanese teabowl form and interpreting it with Western aesthetics. Instead of using stoneware I used porcelain. Instead of being wood or raku fired I used glaze in a soda atmosphere. The cracks were completely intentional as they bring a sense of time & poetry to these beautiful yet imperfect objects. One of the main reasons I am attracted to the Fracture Series aesthetic is because many times, it fits how I feel about myself. I try to be well centered and composed but find that being human, I can’t help but make mistakes. These teabowls with their cracked surfaces and surface variations allow me to feel a sense of comfort in being naturally flawed. Instead of detracting from the piece, these attributes give each handmade teabowl a uniquely striking personality.
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Arun Sharma
100 Flowers campaign #14 Picasso “Violin and Grapes” color photograph digital projection
“Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend.” – Mao
ARTIST STATEMENT By projecting hundreds of rotating images of different western artists, of which each image depicts a flower in some way, onto my wife, Le, I hope to convey that there are many different schools of thought found within the western art world, which my wife may not have had the chance to be exposed to if she had not grown up in the west. From 1956 to 1957, the Chinese Communist party (under Mao) led a campaign entitled,
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“100 Flowers Campaign.” It was an invite for intellectual people in the arts, literature and other creative fields to voice their thoughts and concerns on their current social and political problems to encourage possible solutions. This (it is believed) was a trap for the government to identify individuals who had different or opposing viewpoints. Soon after the campaign was initiated, Mao began the Anti-Rightist Campaign where he rounded up anyone who opposed the Chinese Communist Party. My wife’s family is originally from China. Both sets of her grandparents left during this period to avoid persecution. Both grandparents traveled to Vietnam where they lived and raised their children before Vietnam also became communist. Le’s parents and their young children (my wife was only two years old) then fled to Australia where she was raised. Now, she is living with me in the Pacific Northwest and embracing the American culture. Being married to an American artist, she is exposed to a multitude of western artists and art that I wonder if she would have had the chance to see had her family stayed in China.
Judy Shintani
ARTIST STATEMENT My assemblage illustrates the beauty, history, and honoring of my Japanese American heritage. The pieces reflect how I embrace my identity as an Asian Pacific American and exhibit the uniqueness of my multi-cultural experience. The “Remembrance Shrine” and “The Quiet American Hero” are both pieces which focus on a time in American history which profoundly affected my family. Because these events are not widely discussed, I chose to make stories of the internees available to the public. I also feature the story of Mitsuye Endo, who was instrumental in the closing of the internment camps. I believe it is important to keep our historical mistakes in view, as learnings, in light of the current resurfacing of racial profiling and cultural misunderstandings.
Quiet American Hero (detail) 2006 | 36” x 18” x 18” found objects, photos, writing The story of Mitsuye Endo weaves in and out of the birdcage bars. She was instrumental in the declaration of the internment as unconstitutional.
The shrine is created from a discarded bird cage wrapped in rice paper. It mirrors an Obutsudan, a small Buddhist home shrine, many of which were destroyed in America during World War II. The “Remembrance Shrine” is reminiscent of Isamu Noguchi’s akari (light as illumination) lanterns. The “Remembrance Shrine” incorporates his idea of lightness as an essence and light for awareness. The piece while aesthetically pleasing, also informs the viewers of the hidden feelings and memories of Japanese Americans about this important event in US history. These raw remembrances are presented in a polite (very Japanese) manner, which invites but does not scream for audience attention. artxchange gallery | www.artxchange.org
Remembrance Shrine (detail) 2007 | 54” x 18.5” x 18.5” found objects, writing, light
Judy Shintani
Created to honor the 60th anniversary of the US imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese, most of whom were American. Internee memories were collected and are displayed on the translucent shrine.
Dream Shutters (detail) 2003 | 23” x 18” x 5” found objects, writing, oyster shells Shutters open and close to let the inside in or keep it out.
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My work also relates to the exhibition though the use of materials and the aesthetics involved in creating them. There is a “wrapping” or “gift” like aspect to the covering of the birdcage in rice paper, which is similar to the Japanese tradition of beautiful packaging. Wrapping is also symbolic of a “ritual of purification”. The presence of oyster shells in “Dream Shutters” takes on a personal note. These shells are a family icon, since my father’s family raised oysters in the Puget Sound. I heard many beautiful stories of their time in that area, living on a house boat. Sadly, they lost their home and livelihood during the war. The use of old birdcages, seamstress model, and old shutters reflects a wabi sabi sensibility, beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" (Koren, Leonard (1994). Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers) These materials give a sense of long ago, but also of timelessness. My work takes these Japanese qualities and uses them to express very American experiences.
top: DimensionS 2 2009 36” x 48” oil on canvas
William Song
bottom: Community Series 3 (detail) 2009 48” x 36” oil on canvas
ARTIST STATEMENT
Painting is an immediate expression of life force. It illuminates the sense of mystery and discovery that we experience in our lives and in moments can show what the mind cannot see, much less express, but the heart knows and the body feels. Bringing consciousness to form and color is entering a space through direct sensory perception. Moving to America with my family when I was a child was an experience in huge change, which along with later living for a year in Rome, Italy and a year in Kyoto, Japan, made me very much aware of both the use and limitations of spoken and written language. For me, this has led to seeking inner equilibrium in the midst of change and sharing it through a universal medium not dependent on words. My paintings reflect that process.
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Joseph Songco
ARTIST STATEMENT In the midst of such a high-tech city and America’s move to large chain establishments, Pike Place Market has remained a place where farmers and “mom-and-pop” shops exist and survive. Much has changed in the Asian population working at Pike from pre-World War II to present time. It has evolved from being comprised of mostly Japanese Americans to Filipino and Hmong Americans. But the process of producing and presenting products at Pike remains the same. Day in and day out, farmers and merchants must set-up, sell and break down their stall. The personal stories that comprise the Asian Americans at Pike have roots in the Asian Diaspora, the pursuit of the elusive “American dream.”
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Children (detail) 2002 | 16” x 20” (framed) archival digital print
Mila 2002 | 16” x 20” (framed) archival digital print
Barry Wong
Rice Crackers 2009 27” x 27” (framed) color photograph, archival giclee print
Jasmine Tea & Black Teapot (detail) 2009 27” x 27” (framed) color photograph, archival giclee print
ARTIST STATEMENT These photographs are from a series of still life photographs whose inspiration is drawn from my memories, heritage and experiences as a Chinese American growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown and my experiences in Asia as an Asian American abroad.
young son of Chinese immigrants, I learned about fresh ingredients and Cantonese cuisine. Much of Chinese culture, society and heritage is centered around food. Basic to the Southern Chinese culinary tradition is a reverence for the essence of an ingredient.
In the photographs, there are echoes of my parents’ kitchen and of the small Chinatown grocery stalls and restaurants, where, as the
My goal artistically is to define and capture that reverence for the essential in an iconic and defining image. artxchange gallery | www.artxchange.org
ARTIST STATEMENT Dean Wong has been photographing Seattle's Asian Pacific American community for well over twenty years. His favorite subject has been the Chinatown International District where he was born and raised.
Dean Wong
His interest in Asian communities has also taken him to San Francisco's Chinatown on a Seattle Arts Commission project. #36 BOY (detail) 11” x 14” digital photograph
Wong has worked as a writer and photographer for the International Examiner. His images have appeared in numerous exhibits and books produced by the Wing Luke Asian Museum. Wong has documented the east Kong Yick building, during its conversion to the Wing Luke Asian Museum.
BLUE FUNNEL LINE 14” x 11” digital photograph
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He is currently writing a book about his childhood experiences growing up in Chinatown.
Frederic Wong
ARTIST STATEMENT My art grows out of my Asian heritage, my Asian/American/Pacific Northwest experiences, and my art/science education. I began in Chinese ink painting, worked for a period in conceptual mixed media, and now have returned to my roots. Looking at my work, you might see traces of Chinese ink painting, Northwest mystic painting of Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, or even astronomical or microscopic observations.
discovering how to leave my ego behind, to let nature work. I also want to contrast it with Action Painting, in which artists express their individuality. These images' small size and endless levels of details encourage deep looking.
I create these images by letting tea (or other pigment) stain ceramics tiles. As the tea flows across the tile, I step aside. I only return after the tea is dried to decide to keep it or not. I studied Chinese painting for many years, and painted landscapes in ink on paper. The Chinese say that the best paintings are like cracks on the wall and water stains on the ceiling. The paintings look as though nature has created them, that the artist has stepped aside and let nature come through. In this way, my new work has evolved from my ink paintings. I call it Non-Action Painting because my approach relates with the Daoist concept of non-action (wu wei). I am
UNTITLED (4 INDIVIDUAL TILES) 2008 4” x 4” each | 9.5” x 9.5” framed top: tea stain on ceramic bottom: pigment on ceramic artxchange gallery | www.artxchange.org
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