November 14, 2002

Artists Explore Asian Culture in Chinatown Exhibit

"Untitled Fingerprint Series: 10,000 Lakes," Katarina Wong, installation detail

Just below Canal Street and two flights above McDonald's you will find the Asian American Arts Centre, an unassuming space with a strong vision: to help create a "color conscious" society by promoting Asian American art and its link to other communities. The Centre's 12^th Annual Exhibit, "Between Contrary Equilibriums," showcases the work of eleven Asian American artists who for the first time in the exhibit's history are all female -- a felicitous and serendipitous milestone, according to Museum of Modern Art historian and educator Tricia Paik, who is also one of the five panelists who selected the artists.

This year's exhibit title comes from one of its artists, Katarina Wong, who borrowed it from a Federico García Lorca poem.   Born to a Chinese father and a Cuban mother, Wong says the phrase describes her sense that she is floating at cultural intersections.   Indeed, the exhibit's varied works, while not bound to any particular theme, explore the condition of being an American citizen of Asian descent.  The artists -- whose backgrounds are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Vietnamese -- touch on issues of homeland, migration, spirituality and exploitation. 

The Centre had its beginnings in 1970 when Eleanor S. Yung, along with other university students, founded the Basement Workshop, the first activist Asian American organization on the East Coast.  In 1974, Yung spun the Workshop's dance component into the Asian American Dance Theatre, which in 1987 -- after a shift in focus -- was renamed the Asian American Arts Centre by Yung and her husband, Robert Lee, the Centre's current Executive Director and Curator.

Since the 1960s when the Civil Rights Movement led ethnic communities to create bold, divisive work, Asian American artists have struggled with their relationship to mainstream art.   This year's show coincides with a recent softer trend in which racial divisions are less aggressively manifested.   In this exhibit, which features site-specific installations, paper is the preferred medium. 

"Hanoi, Vietnam," Phuong M. Do, c-print, 2000

Artist Phuong M. Do adopts a National Geographic photojournalistic approach to portray the sense of cultural displacement she felt when she returned to Vietnam, the homeland from which she was forced to emigrate.  In "24/7 (2001)," artist C.J. Lee has installed sewing machines that automatically stitch lines of thread through endless rolls of toilet paper.  The repetition recalls the Asian American experience of working in the garment factories of Chinatown.  In "Fingerprint Project: A Distant Blur," Wong pins wax fingerprints to a tinted blue wall, painting in the shadows that they cast with sumi-ink.  The patterns recall those of birds or fish and evoke Wong's and her family's migration across land, sky and water.

Lee emphasizes what he calls the "often ignored distinction" between Asian and Asian American artists, describing a historical tension between the two groups over Asian authenticity that is often overlooked by the mainstream.

Lee's goal is to attract all New Yorkers and visitors to the Centre, which has archived slides and works of more than 1,100 artists and is striving to form a museum that will have, among other things, the capacity to display its collection of 400-plus pieces on a year-round basis.   

"Transfers," Eva Lee, watercolor and ink on paper, 2000

This is an ongoing challenge because, as with many neighboring cultural organizations, September 11 took a financial toll on the Centre.  An assistance grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fell short of what the Centre required to maintain its full program schedule.  Attendance at the Centre's Saturday class for children fell drastically, as parents grew cautious about safety downtown.  Yet, in the face of these challenges, Lee and his staff continue to work hard to ensure that programs like the annual exhibition -- and the Centre's plans for expansion -- persevere.

The Asian American Arts Centre is located at 26 Bowery on the 3^rd floor above McDonalds.  The exhibit is free to the public, and is open Monday - Friday from 12:30-6:30 p.m., Thursday from 12:30-7:30 p.m.  The 12^th annual exhibition closes November 22. The next exhibition, "Not Your Chop Suey Chinatown: Six Photographers selected by Corky Lee," begins December 6, 2002, and runs through January 17, 2003.  Tickets for the Annual Lunar New Year Folk Festival on February 2 at 2 p.m. are currently available.