Unknown Speaker 00:04 My name is Isabel xario. And I'm an artist, historian. I'm also right now, actually the past five years as a Program Analyst and associate in the museum program at New York State Council on the Arts. I can tell you a little bit more about that later. Thank you for coming. And I'd like to welcome the rest of the panel. Young, some man, I haven't done my homework, by the way, so I know that you had some zooming is a artist because I'm, I'm very familiar with her work. But maybe later, she can tell you a little bit more about Unknown Speaker 00:50 head stop, I couldn't help. It Judith Wilson is art historian. She's teaching at Syracuse University will be a full time assistant professor, professor, associate professor in Virginia soon, and she can tell you a little bit more about about her. As we go along, I hope you don't mind. But I don't have a paper in front of me. I have a tendency of going on to talk to you about my children, my husband and and my 20s. So I hope you don't mind I'm going to read my paper. I'm going to show you slides of work produced by several women of color who are challenging the traditional canons of Art in New York today, there are women who are playing a significant role in the development of post modernist aesthetics. However, before I do this, I'd like to share with you some of my observations of the museum field as it pertains to women of color. I've been working for five years, the New York State Council on the Arts is an associate and I'm responsible for studying all facets of museum operations. And one of the most rewarding aspects of my position is that I get to visit and meet with curators and directors from around the state, about 65 to 85 museums a year. I've had some rewarding experiences in the field and I've had some very bad ones. And I can tell you that on the issues of racism and sexism, sexism, our cultural institutions are not neutral. Cultural and gender apartheid is alive and well in mainstream museums. Most curators believe their curatorial agendas are broadly conceived, and their aesthetic judgments, absolute curators and critics, they what they do is they make up a set of principles based on Eurocentric your American values. And what they do is they identify a group of issues, they maintain an approved list of topics, or concerns that set the parameters in the art world. And if you're not looking at if you're not working within this framework, within their intellectual constructs, then you are not taken seriously if you're a woman of color, a man of color for that matter. There's a sense of arrogance that precludes the predominant culture to be up for and by one group. artists of color women of color, as well as white women continue to be relegated to the periphery of this society. We are characterized as the other identified as the marginal. Marcia Tucker. She's the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Unknown Speaker 03:48 and a non published paper entitled pressing issues in the art world comments and under any circumstances, it becomes clear that aesthetic judgments are not separate from their cause. They are not autonomous and independent. The constant the concept of a purely aesthetic experience has come to be challenged, the aesthetic experience whatever it can be taken to me, it has to be seen as a cultural rather than a natural category. She states, whatever is natural cannot be changed. But whatever is cultural can be subject to revolution. That's why museums are called cultural institutions. They are not timeless, but can change and be changed. Also, we hope. And of course, I believe that change will come about as a result of the shifting Democrat demographics in the country, and the infusion of diverse expressions being documented by alternative arts organizations, such as the alternative Museum in tar King caliber house Chinatown history project just to mention a few and by major institutions such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Musa Boggio, and the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic art, they are redefining the so called official critical stance. And they are challenging the mainstream to take a more pluralistic approach towards the development of a new aesthetic. Many of these institutions came about as a result of the civil rights movement. And while we've lost them, while we've lost them, due to economic pressures, the rest are nurturing a generation of artists and scholars, the mainstream organizations will will have a lot to catch up with if they do not abandon their parochial policies and become more inclusive. In meeting with director the large mainstream organizations, when questioned on the myopic and parochial perspective of exhibitions, their response was the following. And believe me, they say this, they said these things straight on to, to me, sort of like closer than you are to me. It's not that we don't want to include them. It's just that we can't find them. There aren't any good ones. The latest comments include we have standards of excellence, we are looking at high artistic quality. Women are more involved in the class. And that is our focus. Well, my favorite comment, by the way, just fairly recently was we're not dealing with estra aesthetics. Well, he was honest. Now the comment in museum programming is that we do not have affirmative action in museums. I wish I had a picture to show you my face, so that you can see what I felt when the stupid divisive comments were made by the leaders of these museums. Actually, at times I. I actually, like held somewhat a director's hand because I was holding myself from smacking him in the face. Because I knew I'd lose my job. Mainstream museums and galleries will have to learn how to respond to what artists and art historian Amalia, Mr. Baine says is the current transformation of what is considered, quote, American culture, growing cultural awareness among minorities, quote, again, minorities and an increasing group of professionals have resulted in a proliferation of belief systems and aesthetics within America's culture. The question is, how will institutions make this tap challenge or at least one of the questions Amala Mr. Baines in the newsletter published by The New York Foundation for the Arts comments, the challenge is to develop new aesthetics and new bodies of criticism of criticisms, the Eurocentric definitions of modernist criticism, inappropriate, we need to provide scholars who are involved in the creation of new criticism as appropriate to the work at hand with the opportunity to publish. This new critique should reflect the sensibilities and tensions of the work within the artists cultural experience. The problem is a 20th century art has exalted the selfhood of the art object and is defined art production as a spontaneous activity value for this lack of function purpose of content. But in late 80s, with the identification of figuration narrative painting, there was an opening up of the aesthetic dialog to admit notions of sexuality, ethnicity, and politics. However, if you're an artist of color, who's in gender in these type these forms, you were characterized as a romantic or narrow minded. So while the aesthetics of the other are appropriated, the other is denied the recognition and the gratification, for that matter, the Unknown Speaker 08:50 economic gain from as well. We're witnessing a recent profusion of token exhibitions focusing on Hispanic art, for example, such as the exhibition, expanded garden United States organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston curated by John Beardsley and Jane Livingston. That exhibition included 32 artists, three were women. For the record, this is basically the ratio of women of color to men. In shows such as this, I mentioned this exhibition because generic shows such as this, that is black art women artists usually titled such remained the only venue in which persons of color can participate. And of course, if you're a woman, you have less chance than a man. On that note, let me show you just begin to show you some of the slides and the work produced by women whose work and bodies the combination of I'd say a formal and not so formal, modernist concerns and also lewd and sometimes not lewd, but actually incorporate on non western sources. The first artist is And is this mine? Yeah, well let's see how were those faculties or Unknown Speaker 10:07 is it just the fan? Oh okay Unknown Speaker 10:14 you know it's not on maybe it's this maybe this one no it's not is it plugged No, no no it's the other one I'm sorry it's not Unknown Speaker 10:27 on then there's no like oh I see the other one okay this one Unknown Speaker 10:35 actually says that I should have better focus in focus okay Unknown Speaker 10:50 hello I'm gonna sit down Unknown Speaker 10:59 probably some of you have you've been visiting the Studio Museum and Hall and some of the other institutions that we call alternative cultural organizations or museums have you've you're probably very familiar with him face Pringles works. She is. Facing goals or sophisticated educated middle class woman in her mid 50s has lived in Harlem all her life. In 1985 She was appointed a full professor at the University of California in San Diego. She now lives what she calls a bicoastal life dividing her time between New York and La Jolla, California. Ringo is an artist who employs patchwork tie dye techniques and photo etchings and silk or to create huge quilts to tell the hurt the her story of African Americans and till tell us about her own life. She takes an art form traditionally considered a feminine and on decorative craft that is a quilt and a tradition of folktales and she brings them together to reveal social customs to question centuries of repression endured by the African American family and to tell these stories to a heroines eyes and voice. This particular piece is titled change faith wrinkles, over 100 pounds, weight loss story quilt she's the size of this by the way is 57 by seven D 57 inches and a quarter by seven and a quarter they're quite large. Here we see her taking the mundane subject of weight loss as a springboard for self documentation. Were introduced year by year by means of photo etching apply directly to the canvas. To each of the essential things wrinkles life will combine the photo edge composite panels of grouped photographs and each decade of her life begins with a photo of Ringle at age four, and ends with the 80s and wrinkles. Most recent photograph, each panel is devoted to one decade and the viewer files ring goes through childhood, adolescence, his wife as a mother, the birth of her daughters and as an emerging artists. We view her struggle through life as she asserts herself as she shed some physical excess weight as well as the psychological weight. Go to the next one. This work is titled thar beach. It's acrylic on canvas and it's 74 inches by 69 inches. Stunning 1988 This is one of my favorites of all her quilts because it reminds me of my own life experience as a child living in New York City. In the South Bronx. My family like gringos family here spent most of our summers in some of our best times up on the roof. Like Ringo I too, would lay down on a blanket on the on the roof often dreaming of being able to fly around the city high above everyone. Ringo sense of color sense of patterns creates a strong complex design working on many different levels. If you removed any one of the yellow patches from this piece, the entire composition becomes disjunctive. It's conceived as a structural format by which group portraits and, or or not so much here, portraits but it's actually like more like two portraits and they're rhythmically organized so it's it's a it's it's a story about her life and her feelings and but it's also quite a an intellectual construct. Every stage every patch is intellectually conceived. Face states, and I quote her here she says in making quilts I'm able to communicate ideas, I would not be able to communicate in any other way. They're a platform for mixing art and ideas so that neither suffers This piece is called the purple quilt it's 91 inches by 72 inches is the only one of Ringo wrinkles. Quilts not based on Home Story is a group portrait of the cast of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple. Unlike wrinkles, other quilts quilt, where she always has a story in mind, and builds the images as she as she goes along. Here the story Unknown Speaker 15:48 is a story of the images in this one, the cast of characters that is is a complete a completed story. And it's in another person's mind. It's not in her mind, and I think it makes for a change. This presented new challenges and constraints she decided to change the format for example, from a square like you saw earlier, now she's using a rectangle. This she says she does this so that the characters could be more believable. David Peterson great wrote a great article on watching several articles. But I'm going to quote one of her articles on faith when ghosts work and she stated that about this piece that the new scale of the figural imagery in the purple quilt and the reduction of the text gives it a different character. It comes out it comes closer to wrinkles large paintings of the 60s. The central dominant panel is dominated almost full length images of is dominated by six women shog and Sally in the center. Above it this is the bust of six men with Mr. And paw in the center below a crowded three live length figures of the of each of the eight children. These group portraits are shown against floral purple background and a frame by lively squares of traditional quilting left and right vertical strips with carefully selected passages of workers texts, in Sally's own voice. The passages contrast the tragedies of Sally's early life, her rape, the loss of her children the death of her mother, with the fulfillment and happiness of her later years. Her love for shag her successful career her peaceful life with with those she loves. And we have here also a triple voice that is the black female voice home. Alice Walker's and Sally's voice as well. For those of you that may want to see all of a Pringles work I suggest you see the retrospective right now. Her work is on view now at the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island program. The New York State Council on the Arts funded that show. Also she's represented by the commercial gallery, Bernie Steinbaum. And Bernie's timeout is terrific for anyone who wants to study who work and you'd want to go into the gallery and just call Bernice and say you want to come in and take a look at whatever she has. And she will talk to you about her work as well. The finance museum Long Island is in Hempstead. And it's called what we call family Fine Arts Museum Long Island. Unknown Speaker 18:46 After looking at these for so long, I'm convinced and after looking at quilts from the past and historical societies around the country. We actually all of us at my program, there are four of us and we we actually altogether see about 250 historical societies and museums in New York State. And my expertise is in 20th century art but actually have the director of the program I hope olswang Is the her specialties decorative arts and so she spends even more time looking at quilts than I do. I am convinced after looking at Faith wrangles work for so long that she has actually altered the way we are going to be looking at quilts in the future, as as as art scholars and there is no way to go back and look at women's quilts geometric go or just in the way that we have in the past as as sort of functional objects only that had no that were decorative purely decorative. She is I think will will will help us define and find a new language to go back and look at at that work. Next is the work of Margo Machida. And she's an artist whose work focuses on self analysis that is within a personal iconology. We see in her work and urgency to continually renew and perpetuate her identity. Margot Machida was born in Hilo, Hawaii in 1950, and lives in Brooklyn. She's here now so I'll point her out later, you can ask her questions later. She attended New York University where she studied. I understand psychology in journalism. She received an MA in fine arts from Hunter College at present, she's a Rockefeller Foundation fellow in the humanities during research on Asian American artists at the Asian American Center in Queens College. She's working on several metaphorical levels within Margo draws on her life's experiences and recognizes the oppressive internal and external forces that conspired to objectify her. The work seeks to reveal a more expansive view that is informed by by by a feminist and cycle analytic theory and her own life experiences. This work is titled self portrait, am I right? Yeah, multiple contradictions. It's 60 inches by 72 inches, it's acrylic on canvas. Since 1980 form, Machida criticizes utilizes a split format, I guess you can call the cruciform that reflects the subjects complexity and and and fragmentation is portrait we see a cheetah she's crouched, crouching in a fetal position in one sort of meditative and erotic or erotic she coexist with swimming birds within a grid. This title and and others allude to the split self while the image captures metaphoric polarities within within herself such as human animal animate inanimate female male this work and it's in the next title self portraits. This was as you self portrait is Yukio Mishima and supporters you can Mishima as St. Sebastian is I believe this one right okay Unknown Speaker 23:02 No, I can't Oh, sorry. I can't focus Yeah, okay Unknown Speaker 23:15 and I'm gonna good and I'm gonna go Yeah, reverse and just see how that can you focus that? What was that you might not be able to get all three. Machida considers why the UK Mishima another an alter ego of herself, she identifies with the desperation of his search for an identity through role playing with the extremity of his pursuit of the polarities within him with her ensemble will develop between the attraction of the Western world and a preservation of her national identity. And I think that this is you'll see this consistently throughout her work. I'm gonna go back to the slide. Here we see Machida juxtaposes, or her nude body pierced with an error with the body and head and Mishima a Japanese novelist committed suicide by the ways by a disembodied movement and decapitation ritual. There's a harsh self examination that's taking place here and and other works as well but she's also asking us obliquely to speculate and respond to issues of cultural and sexual identity Unknown Speaker 24:59 so I seven this is This is painting titled, like a true samurai samurai. Machida depicts a sexually charged, sexually charged interaction between a man and a woman. The woman struggles to free herself from the aggressive embraces this samurai Machida wearing sunglasses and positions on the edge looking in looking in registers her disapproval the man alludes to perhaps the I feel that from looking at this that perhaps it's it alludes to the Japanese culture that he represents the Japanese culture but maybe Margaret could tell you a little bit more about that if she wants later. This is a work by thanks by Medina Gutierrez. Social dislocations are the concerns of Porto Rican artists Medina Gutierrez, who's mixed media pieces sculpted diagramas constructions depicting episodes from the depict episodes from her from her life. This piece is titled autobiography and her own image. She depicts icons of her life to tell her story of life in Puerto Rico as a child have moved to the United States. She uses handmade paper as well with motifs from Indian and popular Puerto Rican culture. There is another piece this this by the way, it says is three feet by six feet, she creates doll constructions which exploit a Puerto Rican art form to make a statement about the Latin family structure. matriarchal rule. She and I see this a little bit differently, but I thought I'd briefly introduce you to her work. Here. She uses icons and symbols telling you about her life story. Her life not only in Puerto Rico with the chickens and some of the food and but she also tells you about her move to the United States through her through the big contrast the buildings with the red house and herself as a baby. The Bible and other other symbols that this is called the human touch. And it's by Catalina Perez. She's a Oh Catalina Paris collages of magnificent exemplary works I feel she manipulates mediums and materials as a kind of code language for addressing social issues. Unlike the other artists we just looked at Potter uses smaller formats for her social narrations. I'll go back to that when this was called after the contrast gone and it's there are only 22 by by 28 inches by the way. Unlike the other artists that we've looked at PATA uses smaller formats for her social narrations incorporating some stitches into her collages, pod plays with overlapping words and images. Her stitching technique which is sometimes misinterpreted as a feminist comment on a domestic labor is pointed out by inverno fermenter and Amalia messy veins. It's actually a reference to in Bucha s. And Bucha is it's an indigenous Latin American spirit, whose Earth orifices Am I saying that right? orifices are some sharp and wild specific Latin American references. Mark the work of Potter is in very not lockpicks blockbusters noted she actually extends the symbols of in Bucha is beyond its historic connotation to comment on the censorship imposed by military dictatorships and mass media conditioning in her in her country. I also perceive it as also a comment of the lot Latina and Latino. We live relationship between the male and the female in Latin America. This is the other 122 inches by 28 and 18 by 28. quite small. That's right. That's right. This was called after the lunch Wait, let's see after the Contras are gone, this one Unknown Speaker 30:00 Could you say that out loud? That's fine? Yes. So I'm sorry. Sure. Right. In fact, cheese is the times which is yes. Right, Unknown Speaker 30:10 which is a material that's not going to last. That's fine. I find very interesting. Because what the image is saying is that this is an image that for me anyhow, this is, this is a piece of media that I'm using that will no longer it may not continue to give you its message, but it will always be there as part of our lives where the New York Times is always there as part of our lives. Unknown Speaker 30:36 Maybe that's sure Unknown Speaker 30:45 galleries that we're presenting to these people, because for some of us Unknown Speaker 30:52 well, I know at the end of this I can give you I can very quickly go over a list of Oh, writing on the blackboard good idea might do that can come up a house in China Taiwan History Project and all the others there. They're quite quite quite a lot. We'll do that. This is from a slide actually from a show that was in in tar. And I believe it was also at some point at the alternative museum downtown and we found white Street. And I have two more artists and I'll be through this is a work by Christina Manuel and 28 inches by 18 and a half is called adabas events, events in her life. Let me show you very quickly the next one. This one is called Angelica Angelica is of course us, Angelica and her staff are Angelica and her things. It's 28 inches by 18 and a half inches. Unknown Speaker 32:01 Christina depicts arrangements of mementos, photographs and require those collections of memories that constitute a kind of recollection reminding us to the families and her family and the beloved through a a mixture of commingling of disparate elements, this reconciling of contradictions and using the actual remnants of people. That is real experiences. What historian Malia mess urbaines identifies as Rasc watches more Rask watches, it's characteristic of RAS watch it, which is tasting the preference for bowl display an accumulation the use of discarded bits and remnants valued for their interest, beauty and appropriated as sincere decorations, use of broken dishes, plastic roses, old marbles, glitters, sequins and bits of colored glass are an example of everyday Rask watching. And and I didn't get to speak to a to Christina on this. So I was very much curious about whether this was her mother, her sister certainly is someone that she loved and is very close to. So I can't tell you any more about it. So yeah. You Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Christina Manuela is I think she kind of wanted to show you an artist who's working in a format that's quite different. I think from some of the other artists. I think often what happens is when you select a few within the constraints of the Tod the limitation of your talk and sort of give it sometimes seems to be as maybe a distorted picture of women. What artists are doing and believe me, there is a there there are a lot there. Well, according to Howard Dean up in Dell study in 87, there are 11,000 artists of color, and more than half are women of color. So there are a lot of artists working out there and for those of you that that that want to go into wanting to follow their work and we can use actually more scholars and more critics to write about these artists works by the way for those who that are interested. By the way at the end of this I'm only going to speak about this one other artists. Liliana Porter For those of you that maybe just didn't maybe at the end of when when we finish, I'm in the museum program and as you know, and we have an internship program where we're bringing in students to to intern in museums and art museums for a year and the museum's we give the museum's fun so they can provide students with a pretty good stipend. For those of you that may be interested in doing that, please speak to me at the end of the session. Sorry. I had to say that because I know I'll forget later about it. Here's the the this is by the way, Liliana Porter, she's Argentina. This is called the traveler. These are very large paintings that I'm going to show you they're 80 inches by 182. This is obviously a triptych. Live Liliana Porter is from Argentina began art school but she was 12 years old and went to Mexico City to work when she was 16. There she studied with Mateus, Gertz by night by 17, she was exhibiting at the Mexican avant garde Galleria Hotel. In 1964. On her way to Paris, she came to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and decided that she wanted to stay in New York City. She had exhibitions in New York fairly. Pretty much right away. Her involvement in the New York graphic workshop gave her a platform from which to rethink the graphic medium she was, she found that she was more interested in what she calls the poetics of printmaking techniques or her work took a minimalist forms, when she saw that incredibly complicated printing techniques can be replaced with simple approaches to content and means. She says that she thought there would be more impact and magic and showing the absence of whatever I chose to I'm quoting her. Unknown Speaker 37:04 And showing the absence of whatever I chose to work with, rather than its presence, or the presence of many things. Unlike some of the other artists that we were just looking at. This is called the traveler and I wanted to show you some details of that. This is a close up of that piece. And she as you can very well see she incorporates real objects, and at times does these very photo realist depictions of objects as well. And unless you get very close, takes you a while to figure out which is the real thing which isn't, which is sort of marvelous magic, there is a magical aspect to her work, not just in the process and looking at it, but also in the sense of her choice of color. And her choice a combination of, of colors that she placed together, where she has a canvas practically with no identifiable image, and another where there's just one or two objects that have an image that that we can read as a as a book or some other form. And that's the end thank you for your patience. I translate while I'm speaking so it's okay Unknown Speaker 38:50 do you want me to do slides? Do you want me to do that? I can do that unless she wants me to do it, unless she wants me to. Unknown Speaker 39:12 I'm gonna start right away because I do have a lot of work to show. Mostly mostly there my work, but I do have other works as well that I've come across in my travels that are both an inspiration, resource kind of concept. Perhaps for my work. I sometimes have prepared statements but this time I decided to really just focus on the slides and hopefully, the issues and other statements in relation to work that I show Unknown Speaker 40:00 This is sort of lifted from. Coordinate to Switzerland. I extracted this presentation from other presentations I've done. And it's always kind of the start of why, like, where do I start work. But I think I decided to start with this word, because it is, it sort of is the foundation for some of the later works. But it also points out, as you'll see later, sort of the evolution from some of the changes concerning this work. I've been doing a lot of mixed media work for quite a number of years, leading up to this. And oftentimes, in most of the cases, there are temporary installations that are site related or site specific, in the sense that I always have a site in mind, and then I do the work for it. And in this case, there's an ad to I believe, I had an opportunity to work with this, adjoining the room in between these two large aviary rooms, in the birdhouse at Central Park, and what used to be the Unknown Speaker 41:26 exhibition space. And so it was a small room, and we have an additional wall built. So it became this sort of situation. And these are two installation shots of it. This was called face to face with life. Unknown Speaker 41:47 And it was sort of my attempt to kind of talk back to life and sort of, sort of deconstruct life in my own fashion. And I, because I always had trouble with with the titles of these journals, life and time for these. And a total sense that these magazines gave. And I was very much sort of working from the kind of an inspired statement of God or that the filmmakers at that time that a photograph is not the reflection of reality, but the reality of the reflection. In other words, you know, what, what is it when you look at the images that what sort of mediation what sort of editorial processing that the these images take on, in particular, those journalistic images that pretend to try to give us a representation of what's going on out there. So the basic conceit of this piece was all that I use its framework for the all the pages of this particular one issue, October, at one issue of Life magazine and use the basically stuck with the order of the magazine itself, in all the pages that had images of faces, basically, Overlay, and sort of modifying their text with my text. In some case, for instance, in the close up of one of the cases on the roads, there's an overlay, I believe are students from Laura moldy, who wrote a very seminal visual narrative cinema. I gotta move along, kind of fast, I do a lot of slides. These two are still works, works on paper and how to go back and forth with a lot of media Unknown Speaker 44:00 I missing a slide or flow that's not going in properly. So in any case, these are etchings that also are in the narrative vein using composite imagery. It's that one slide. I was teaching printmaking for a while at a university in Athens. This was a period when I was able to do some work on the right actually is work on paper, mixed media, drawing on paper, but using acrylic and spray paint and graphite and I entitled that piece immigrants Unknown Speaker 44:53 one on the left is an etching but the one on the right is a bit later. It's called American friends. As. And there's a text that's written in Korean pictorially on the wall. But whenever I show that I always make sure that it's translated into English. Because I mean that title in an ironic way, that my father, who was pictured in this image sitting on the left, far left with the American friend circle, in the middle was his officer, the who he worked for. And this image, the text basically kind of makes the great leap from sort of the personal history to a larger history in terms of the relations between us and Korea. And the heavy militarization and the Division of American style, and the US having military continuing. This also touches on that theme of US presidency. It's called back of the bus and I can give you three and I'm using the title back of the phrase for all it's worth, you know, the association's that it has in terms of the US Civil Rights Movement, but there was a very dynamic, interesting interplay of all the people, especially US soldiers, and the Koreans, especially the woman snapshot, revealing that there's this natural 1953 was the end of the Korean War, but it's also when I was born. So that makes the connection between me and my mother, who was pictured at the back of the bus. Be. Okay. I'll get this one. This is the cover of a mixed meat collaborative book project that I did with two other Korean women, in which all of us are identified with our last names on the cover of the book, my last name in the other two women. And we each chose one of the three colors in the Korean mandala. I was the blue. And it was all done. Xerox, this was we did it for a show that actually, Faith Ringgold was instrumental in organizing, which is called coast to coast, women of color book project. And I think it's still traveling somewhere. But for this exhibition, we decided to do a collaborative work in which we can work independently. And you add also the book functions independently in that you can, each of those are colored Xerox pages that are that you could flip independently. So each, each color is basically a separate strip. So you get this interesting mix of different pages, maintaining the integrity of the colors. And then we're jumping gears here to well, we're going back to the installation mode. But this is after I've moved to New York. This is not strictly chronological, this presentation. But the this is probably the first piece that I felt that I sort of more satisfactory, at least to myself dealt with the issue of identity, you know, really sort of confronting it more directly in the work. And it's called half home. And it was trying to sort of come to terms with the hybrid sort of identity of an immigrant basically, feeling to a certain extent, you know, that you're not sort of fully home here or back in your motherland. And it sort of came out of my experience of working closely with Korean American social service organization, social and political organization and in the process of association with them having getting very learning a lot more about the Korean history, which increments situation which was fairly ignorant at that time. And it's sort of structured in succession. Yes, six sections starting well, and there's Unknown Speaker 49:28 the detailed sections. This is navigate to all of the other two sections. One of the unique features of this piece, first time that I tried it was that it employed use these semi transparent sheets have long rolls of paper, come from the ceiling to the floor and in a lot alchemy that allowed me a physical way of layering my text, which sort of metaphorically was layered anyway, and allowing the images, you know, underneath the paper as well as on top. And so that I invite the viewers with a big sign saying please touch. And so you had to sort of impress, press the paper to the wall to really see what was underneath. And it really a lot of viewers are incredibly intimidated to touch the work. But they did. And a reviewer said something that he associated with the Wailing Wall, I mean that people sort of groping on the way Mo, which is a sort of an interesting association that I would have. And this is an also punctuated throughout the piece where these relief elements, the plays on basically more variations on the house for this was the first one on the first module, right smack in the middle. And it shows the spirit, nuclear family. These are other two, two House forms, and they're all different, completely different collages. This one was sort of preface the section of mother tongue, where I talked about the the sort of central role that language has plays in terms of the formation of identity, cultural identity. And in my case, that the problem in terms of losing a language, the original mother tongue, and that's one preface the section on history. Inside this house, is the origami, a shirt with image of the Christian fiction, basically, persecution of Koreans during the 35 years of the Korea was colonized with Japan and on the outside is the map of Korea basically, bending around the ship has shaped with the ways that you can jump in the sense of of building it. But the point of the history section was really to point out that the earliest sections were dealing about the past, and it's sort of a was sort of pointing out that oftentimes when you sort of go back to your roots, one of the first things that you you tend to have a very nostalgic view of your, your routes. And one way sort of to get out of that is to really learn the history and to and then even beyond during the history is to confront the current realities of it. And this house, the monopolies that we're dealing with the current political situation, Korea. For me, that was the full retrieval of my identity is to really become involved in what's going on there now, which is what that last part is. Unknown Speaker 52:57 Okay. This isn't this next installation. Something is out of sync here. They're supposed to be oh, here it is. Yes, thank you. This is a large room installation at Jamaica, Queens. It was called World War, wh IRL, that sort of playing on Warped world. And it's sort of the overall idea was sort of kind of trying to play with the duality of the fact that the world The spiral is sort of a force of life, life giving force as well as its destructive force, and playing on many different levels of that, that reality in terms of my own personal history, as well as larger global context. And that was the first one I wanted. It was an experiential sort of situation, but I wanted the viewer also to encounter it left, right. And so that was the first of all text. This shows you again, I was playing with a translator. The layers of text. In this second world, large world, it's you can read the text. They have paid textbooks. I found actually, at the time that I was working on this piece from a fortune cookie, but it's just half the world. No, it's not how the other lives and the middle is stencil. It's really out of focus. stencil, which is the demilitarized zone, the division of North and South Korea, but the under the layer underneath is made up of texts, newspapers and newspaper Isn't Korean on one side of the split and on the other side, US papers. And so it's relating, you know, both to sort of the specific situation of Korea North and South Division but as well as other divisions, as well showed you some there were software elements on the floor and the, what I call moon rocks also had these little like containers on top and that one where they contain water in this case and earth, and rice, and it's sort of related back to the original, the first one. Okay, ignore this one. Anyway, that's the last wall. And it sort of was meant to be sort of a tongue in cheek, last wall. And the other piece, sort of empowered image of myself holding up the world. Oh, wait. This is another installation for a very interesting show called upsell. And the Oregon the curator of this show, asked each of the six artists to collaborate with a social service organization of their choice. And I decided to collaborate with an organization called coalition against anti Asian violence. This organization, I have a previous relationship anyway. And we decided collectively to focus the piece. Since the audience for this piece would be primarily non Asian, but decided maybe it would be helpful for us to give kind of a historical background of Asian Americans. And the piece was entitled equity of gold and different names saying game. So the first part of the piece, first to the name that the Chinese, the original, the early settlers in the mid 1800s, gave to the United States were specifically to San Cisco, that it was a golden mountain, that the riches and opportunities and blah, blah, and so that the the central motif of this piece is the mountain shade made up of the words white on the left side and lie on the right side. And then within that motif are images depicting significant points in Asian American history in both my poor rendering, but anyway, and then above that, it sort of point to this banner spanning the whole length, which says different names thinking, yellow peril, a equated to model minority that sort of pointing to the second half of the title. But basically, these are different stereotypes, but in a way, they're sort of similar in the fact that they don't really, really relate to reality. Unknown Speaker 58:01 I work in a lot of different media, obviously. And this one I had permission to do outdoor sculpture piece for City Hall Park in Manhattan. And I wants to piece that address the notion of the diverse communities in New York. And this is called groundswell. And it's also a narrative sculpture, in the sense that you read the three parts and you read from left to right. And it says sort of a metamorphosis from this black inner house that sort of lying in or on the ground, to the middle piece, which you see, you see it from the backside, more detailed shot of it with a spiral, open structured piece with a spiral of a pennant in intervals of black and white, to symbolize transformation change struggle, and or maybe that's my struggle, but transfer change in a way and then the final house which is an open house, a sort of flower light. And in the middle, are the profiles in the primary colors, representing different people of color, and of all colors, and then the house inside of the house is lined with neuro Plexi to reflect the people, the viewer and the environment to suggest that this community is sensitive to the needs of the people as well as the environment. And after the half month, stay, you know at City Hall Park, I don't have a place to attend. I mean, I'm born in the Bronx, which is where it is right now and so it's a very different situation with this brother. This next piece is called agitprop number one and it's first in a series that I've done with these agitprop pieces. The left is the first of the front side. And on the right you see the backside of this piece. And it's the first sort of real freestanding wall. So the first, but it's a freestanding sculpture. And it's dealing with the Cold War. And I did it for a show that was an entire gallery, too. And it was organized by Adina and inverter, named autobiography. And initially, some people were puzzled by why this, how this relates to biography. But for me, this historical tension, well, these historic historical events were very instrumental in terms of a lot of immigrants lives, and the Cold War definitely had interface with my life was, in part responsible for me coming to the states in the first place. And so on the front side of this piece shows US and USSR sort of mirroring each other and sort of, you know, locked in a symbiotic relationship. And then on the right, the backside, you see the rest of the world under a target motif, with the Cold War, spelled out in the middle, kind of being torn apart structurally. You see, the, this is some of the other ads in the series and an ensemble of them, but I'm not sort of satisfied with this whole series. But the the one on the right, that's detailed is a piece that sort of related to it's the you, the world sort of thrown off balance by what the statement, that's when that bowling ball that I found, and the statement says, I mean, I found the bowling ball, I'm gonna put the statement on. The statement reads, it's a quote from Abe Lincoln, that a presidential candidate Bush used in one of those debates. last election, which said, we are the last best hope of man on earth. And it's that sort of magic and making manifest destiny, you know, imperialistic notion that I, you know, particularly Unknown Speaker 1:02:21 this is the last another one of the agitprop series. And that was for, it's a window piece with the cheapest, you know, kitchen curtain thing come across. But one on the left side, it's it's iron, it's hard to pick out the word, but in red, it's iron. And then on the right side, it's bamboo. Overlay, or within those words are coca and colony. So we're being COVID, colonized. Unknown Speaker 1:02:54 This piece called Make me and it's been shown different places, and it's taken on different manifestations each time, but basically, it's made up of split images of the face. So I always like to sort of use a corner in some way or another. And it's sort of confronting these stereotypes, especially the other but also particular variations. I think I have details of each one, one of minority, exotic immigrants, and they're illiterate. And there were two plays on words objectified other and assimilated anyway. This one is I did it for a show kind of a benign show on landscape that this gallery of town if if since we had, but I asked him I wanted I told him I wants to do something about social ecology. And in particular, the destruction of the rainforest in the Amazons, and the Amazon. So this piece is called the real estate of things, the Big E and for Chico Mendes and the forest dwellers. And so it's this expanse of the sky, and bounded on one side, but the word imparted, which in Portuguese means standoff. And that is the rallying cry, basically, of the rubber tappers against the developers who are going in there for the big, big money developers and government supported developers who are going in there and are partly responsible for the destruction of the rainforest. But on the right side, I hope you can read some of the words that I tried to create the sort of Mangala dead end some of the main causes of this destruction and starting with you know, all you need is $1 and a dream which to me, I was trying to relate that lotto jingle, jingle, jingle. The fact that, you know, I mean people are the core of this, the urban underclass and Brazil are moving into the Amazon And they're the least to blame. Because I mean, they're moving in there because they can't make to the cities because of the government policies and everything else, the poverty, but as you wind in to the dead end, which ends with sky's the limit, I implicate other things like the World Bank, and the Inter American Development Bank, and all these larger forces that are basically, policy was instrumental for the destruction. Basically, they're the ones, we're a bank, for instance, who built the highways, you know, in the Amazon. And once you build that, there's no way you can keep the people out from going there. This is switching gears in but I was doing this last project was a collaboration with a dancer Barbara Chang and a musician, Lea sharp, who both worked in a very improvisational manner. And so I doing the visuals for this, I decided to create this, the only structure to this piece really was that it was based on the five elements. And the Chinese five elements of life, fire, earth, metal, wood, Earth, and so all those different panels are sort of key to those each of the elements. And you see elements with the lighting and, and but there was a prelude and a codec. And that had a slideshow component with a solo bite with bar chain, slightly different from the ceiling to the floor, and the masks of different world sort of torn apart branch, tree worlds on their faces. And that's the last one. Okay, there's seven parts at a time for this, I was just starting out with showing you this map because this is, you know, not that we are the world part but but it's it's to point out with this is the Peters projection, which I hope most of you by now are familiar with, which, you know, kind of, which offers us a whole different view of the world. And the Mercator map that is most commonly used, and certainly the map that I grew up in my history classes with, and it shows you more than the true size and proportion of the world. And, you know, when I first saw it, it's nothing. It's very distorted. You know, and because the Mercator map was created in the 1400s, during the time of the European domination, that the Western world and has a very, presents a very Eurocentric view of the world in which the it really diminished or enlarge the northern hemisphere over the southern hemisphere. But with this, you see the proper forces, and you see how large the southern hemisphere is in relation to Europe, and the Qt anyway, so. And I. Unknown Speaker 1:07:53 So one of the things that I'm really fascinated by is what's going on in the other in the third world in terms of the art. And I've had some opportunity a little bit to travel here and there and just showing you some slides, which alloga had an opportunity to go there several times. I a little bit of anti EU sentiment. But this is a mural in the Olaf palm, this international conference center in Managua. And this is by an artist by the name of saints, and his first name, but he's a indigenous Indian from the Atlantic Coast artists. This large mural depicting sort of the pre colonial period in Latin America and Central America. This is festival time in the small town did a Jamba, which their patron saint is St. Francis. And they have this very elaborate costume that they parade around during that day. And the masks are basically supposed to be representing the colonialist. Basically the white man in the back have these very elaborate costume prints. Most of the kids wear these costumes and parade ones was really remarkable. The one on the right is a painting also from the.com Center, which has probably the best representation of contemporary Nicaraguan art in Nicaragua. And that is by Well, I guess she's she's laughing. She's the black, Nicaraguan from the Atlantic coast. The city of Bluefields and her name is June beard I believe. She did the United States once but she died about five years ago but this is her Black Sunday you know that All right. As she she will work, it's really quite amazing in the in the fact that she's depicting a lot of sort of her everyday reality and sort of giving another look at another cultures view of the revolution you're sending, painted on the wall. Alternative Music, this, this is jumping places to the occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza, alternative museum sent a bunch of artists, a group of artists, about 10 artists to the Middle East last year, and basically, we're going to be having a show based on his experience in May, coming up with the upcoming Museum, which I hope all of you will get a chance to see. And it's gonna be called the occupation, occupation and resistance. American first impressions. And this just shows you I think this was a novelist. No, actually, this was in Nazareth, which is inside the arena, in other words, inside of Israel. And that shows you some of the containment of a lot of the villages in refugee refugee towns, refugee camps, by the Israeli security by the army, basically to restrict the movement of the Palestinians in a small refugee. And you just more disciplined as with our Annapolis, one of the larger cities, was quite active in the resistance. Gaza, when we were in Gaza, actually, there was such where there was so many, all the camps, practically were sealed off, and, like curfew, and so we had, we could only get into one of each camp. And this is where that was taken. The when I returned, I had already set into motion the having a show, Palestinian issue at a small alternative space in Brooklyn called minor injury. And so when I returned a couple of months later, there was a show called Palestine quest for homeland and we had a panel discussion, in conjunction with the exhibition was a group exhibition of invited artists. I'm showing you now jumping gears a places again to South Korea, my homeland, and I Unknown Speaker 1:12:48 have gotten quite interested in and familiar with, with some of the contemporary artists there, through my visits there. And also, many of them are now living here, or some of them are living here. And we've also they we had an exhibition of South Korean political art recent art since the 80s. At artists page last year, but the this is sort of a beautiful list inspiration for me because it's a cave drawing, which I think is situated in North Korea, what is now North Korea, but it's it goes way back in time. 1000 years old or something, but it shows the moon goddess basically this woman holding up the world and I thought well, that's neat. That one is over there on the right is by very well known. See, there's there's a whole anti oppositional movement in Korea that a lot of these artists are linked with, affiliated with. And this movement is the artists movement is called Minjun, which roughly translates as people's movement and they're very much questioning, you know, their relationship to Western art. Because the mainstream art scene in South Korea is like in many other third world countries very much Western influenced and so that, you know, if you go to the galleries in South Korea in Seoul, for instance, you'd see pretty much the same sort of range that you would see here. And so these guys are sort of beginning to question their identity and sort of get back to their roots and so on. But this one shows you the this incredible epic sweep of Korean history ending up with sort of this capitalistic image and this woman is a modern dancer, but she does these beautiful she's very popular with the movement and she does this incredible even performances, I guess that that kind of combined traditional dance movements with sort of more modern things, but what this is part of this is what she's doing is this sort of cathartic sort of fraying of the spirits. And I think it has a shamanistic roots queen has a very strong shaman tradition, which is, unlike other shamans tradition is very female oriented. I mean, most of this Korean shamans are females. And they really wield the power and to address the gods and spirits. And so she runs through this fabric, sort of splitting it in half. And it's just a very powerful image. And a lot of the works are very political. overtly political, I mean, you know, very much addressing the notion of political relationship, the relationship, social, political, economic, with us and Korea, and also attempt to dealing with the common people who are usually addressed a lot of the art that you see in the mainstream galleries in Korea, the workers, and the movement is sort of a loose alliance of workers speaking of the artists, and comments on basically, on the western Westernization, all aspects of life, and a lot of the artists form collectives, interesting, because they, they don't want to sort of perpetuate this sort of individualistic notion of the artists in the Western sense and sort of diminish the sort of economic with the money making aspect of it. This is by a woman's collective, which was sort of detecting sort of a struggle of women workers to organize. And they're also attempting to get the words out of the galleries into the streets. And, you know, very much involved with agitprop sort of orientation with art. So art is very much always such a such a part of any sort of big gathering of people. And a lot of outside murals, which, as soon as they're put up, they're destroyed by the government. So this is a mural large mural history of Africa. That was, this is from the artist space exhibition of the Korean political art. This artists called a particular kinship to African history and colonial imperialistic backgrounds. Now, I'm switching gears and we're going to Cuba that I went last November to Cuba to attend the Havana Vietnam. And it was Unknown Speaker 1:17:46 housed basically, for the most part in the National Museum of Fine Arts, in which is located in the Old Havana section, which is beautiful. It's a lot of these pre revolutionary buildings, colonial buildings. Some of the parts are very one down and then you see this huge poster, lots of incredible history. This is inside the museum. There's large courtyard, and she's one of the people from the organizers. There, they were dealing with incredible limited resources. But this is another view. A lot of the windows were missing and so on. But in any case, it's the BNR. It's the third one that occurred and it's probably one of the largest showcases of thermal art. And that's by works, but this to Mexican female artists, this one is large bikini installation. Both of them sort of dealing with religious themes. This one asked the question, Why does no one talk about the costs of marrying? Yeah, and this one is a Filipino artist by the name of Brenda Faro. And she is sort of using the motif the tarot cards to depict Filipino history and sort of reality and some of the words are in Spanish and some are in Tagalog. Unknown Speaker 1:19:29 Here's another one. Okay, this one is a Cuban artist, Maria Perez. Well, there's a slide that's not going in. But anyway, I had another side of hers. But she Cuba has an incredibly exciting, an active and very sophisticated contemporary art movement and they're very strong. on female artists in that movements that were getting lots of attention as well. So one interesting component of the exhibition, there'll be an all was black artists from England, and which is sort of anomaly in a way because it was a Third World show. But what these guys did was try to press the point that yes, there was a third world in the first world. And I hope in the future that the Vietnam will also include maybe the third world in the first world. Also in England, France, Canada, US, but any case, but it was the black artists from England who were included in the show, mostly because they proposed it, and they brought the word there. And this is one of the foremost sort of key members of the Black Arts Movement in. In England, her name is Sonia Boyce, and she works mostly in the collage format. Switching gears, but anyway, it's a very politically highly politicized art movement in in England, forming a sort of an alliance between with Southeast Asian artists and African artists in England. Then, after duty high and some of the people were the opportunity to be jurors in a woman's art show, women of color show competitive show at San Antonio at the Guadalupe Art Center a couple months ago, and it was, you know, an observation or celebration of the women's history, International Women's system. And I just want to show you a couple of the Asian American women who were in the show. This is a Hangzhou from Texas. But she's been just recently moved about five years ago from mainland China. And she does these mixed media constructions. These two are photographs, lightbox photographic constructions by an American woman, born and living in Houston, Texas. Dealing with media images, agents. Okay, that's my studio, back at home.