Sharing my stories on anti-Asian racism

My history not my memory
Xerox transfer on Japaense paper
10'x 15',  1999

 

 

 

I recently wrote a post for Harvard Fine Arts Library's social media and post about my experiences with anti-Asian racism.

“In the early nineties when I was a college student in a suburb outside Boston, my car was vandalized on the campus parking lot at night. All the windows were smashed, every single wire and tube in the front was cut and dismantled, and there was a message scratched on the side of the car, “KKK was here.” My registration card, which I kept in the glove compartment, was left on the passenger seat, as if to warn me that whoever did this knew who I was and where I lived. The campus police officer to whom I reported the incident, who was in the dominant group, refused to file it as a hate crime. Despite my pleading and the obvious evidence, the incident was only filed as vandalism. I was not offered any kind of emotional support from the college, and I lived in fear for my safety for many months... Read more.

 

My history not my memory, detail

Perpetual Self Discipline
Xerox transfer on Japanese paper, cast glass of dumbbells, video
size variable, 1996 - 1997

Hours Days Weeks Months Years Decades Centuries

Hours Days Weeks Months Years Decades Centuries, No.1
India ink and graphite on paper
22" in diameter
2020 - 2021

I started drawing black circles on a bunch of round papers last fall. I wanted to draw perfect circles, so I gathered all sorts of circular shapes to use as templates—lids of pots and pans, tins that came with candles, a Petri dish, and so on.  I used these tools to draw many different sizes of circles on the round papers. These circles didn’t demand any composition. They preferred randomness and began to multiply. It’s been my nightly activity to draw and paint these black circles each day.

No. 2, detail

I think I know what I’m doing, then I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I’m trying to make sense of the world but I don’t exactly know how to make sense of it all. Maybe intellectually I can see how the world became as it did, but my emotions are all over the place, messy and confusing. I’m afraid that there will be a delayed response. Years from now, we might realize what the year 2020 has done to the core of our beings and the entire world.

 

Or maybe not. 

 

But I know where these black circles came from. 

Hours Days Weeks Months Years Decades Centuries, No.2

In the spring of 2020 when the United States and many other countries around the world were hit by the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, I obsessively checked the maps of the coronavirus infection and death rates in the New York Times every day. At that time, both infection rates and death rates were represented as circles on the map. You could see where the hot spots were by looking at the size of the red circles on the coronavirus infection map. The map for the Covid-19 deaths used black circles. The sizes of these circles were growing each day at an exponential rate, to the point that eventually, the New York Times switched to the color-coded maps for each state, because the size of the circles got so big that they started covering the whole state. 

 

Each day, I was horrified looking at those circles growing larger and spreading throughout the country. 

 

Hours Days Weeks Months Years Decades Centuries, No.3

Then, the murder of George Floyd happened, and the Black Lives Matter protests followed. The New York Times was tracking the BLM protests and where the protests were taking place. Again, there was a map. When I first saw the map, I had to do a double take because I was seeing black circles on the map. A strange Deja-vu moment, but immediately followed by hope and joy once I realized what I was looking at. 

 

One night in my studio as I was working on the black circles, I saw the graphite marks shining on the paper against the black. I liked that and started to paint around the graphite marks so that I didn't obscure their shine with ink. I keep adding circles. I’m not sure when it will end or when it is finished. Maybe time will tell. 

 

Or maybe not.

 

No. 3, detail

Mapping

Happy New Year. I hope the 2021 will bring bright hopes, good health, peace and justice for all of us. As I write this, my mind is on Georgia right now.

Looking back on the epic year 2020, the highlight of my artistic activities was being able to install a solo show. Such things are difficult during the pandemic, but I enjoyed every minute of installing the show while wearing a mask. I was re-energized with this prospect of sharing my work with people (in-person and in real space) and realized how important it was for me to feel connected this way. Even though the exhibit was open to the Rivers School community only, but not to the public due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the exhibit was enjoyed by students and faculty at the Rivers School. I particularly enjoyed several positive comments from the students while I was installing “Field Notes, II,” a room-size installation in one of the galleries. 

 

Field Notes, II
Archival pigment print on Tyvek and vellum
98"x 240"x 180"
2016 - 2020

In order to share my work beyond the Rivers School community, I created a virtual exhibit site, so that anybody can view the exhibit from the comfort of their home.

“Mapping” opened at the Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts on October 19th. 

 

"Extinction Studies" series

As an artist, making art in the studio has been tremendously helpful for me in sustaining a sense of normalcy in my life during the pandemic. My work kept me grounded, so to speak, literally working on a drawing on the floor every day. The life of confinement also gave me new ways of thinking and looking at my old work, and I saw it as an opportunity to experiment with my old work.
 
I presented a couple of new works and new “old” works in this exhibit. The new works are two map drawings from “Extinction Studies” series that are based on historical maps of the Adirondacks in northern New York state.

 

Map of Adirondack Wilderness, 1888

India ink, walnut ink, and ink on paper

86"x 70" (diptych)

2019

 

Two new “old” pieces came out of my reflection on science and belief during the pandemic. “Field Notes, II” is an installation that is composed with images of scientific writings that were hand traced from the whiteboards during my residency at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in 2016–2017. While there I learned that science is rigorous. Scientific knowledge as we come to know it is the result of countless days, months, and years of experiments by scientists working in the lab. Science, as I observed, is driven by the desire to understand the unknown and the courage to go in search of things that might not be knowable. This was where I, as an artist, felt closely in sync with scientists about the way we do our work. This installation, “Field Notes, II,” with layers of the scientific ideas and writings being laid on the floor, calls attention to what makes the groundwork for future scientific discoveries.

 

Field Notes, II, detail

When there are no treatments available, what do we do, where do we go, and how do we deal with the disease, both physically and mentally? I have been asking myself these questions since the pandemic started. We’ve been living with these questions for several months now. In “Accrescence,” which means continual growth, magic spells from ancient medical papyrus were deployed to create new meanings. I included  these magic spells in my work in the past, but the pandemic made me go back to them and look at them in a different way. In this iteration, magic spells (laser cut on vellum) are presented by layering old and found papers that have histories and meanings for me into new and singular works. In this work, layering became important to me. Adding layers of histories to these magic spells, our desire to want to believe in medical treatment is never lost then or now, whether magic spells for ancient people or prayers and hope for vaccines during the pandemic in the 21st century. To me, these pieces speak quietly as a prayer.

 

Accrescence
Installation view
Laser cut on vellum and found papers
Approx. 20"x 14" each
2016-2020

Mapping is one way we come to understand the world by organizing and systemizing layers of information. This organizing helps us understand the scope of data and information in a visual way. But maps do not remain unchanged. To an artist, maps are starting points for new interpretations, experiments, inventions, and actions. In this exhibit, I presented several different bodies of work that are related to mapping and maps. The collecting and organizing of layers of information in science, and the weaving of histories can be seen as my attempt to understand the unknown as well as the time we are in.

 

Thank you for reading and for your ongoing support.
Please stay safe and healthy.

 

 

Turning the Wheel: Artists Activists Award

I was humbled and honored to be one of the awardees for this year’s Medicine Men and Women and Artists Activists, along with Gary Bailey, Kay Walsh, and Amir Dixon on the virtual Turning the Wheel event on June 25th. 

I'm happy to share my presentation from the event. You can watch it on Vimeo.

Turning The Wheel is a fundraising event for the Medicine Wheel Productions, a non-profit organization founded in 2000 by Michael Dowling. Their mission is to transform communities from the inside out by inviting all members to participate in the healing and transcendent power of public art. They are forging a Common Path—one of inclusion and civic engagement—using art as a threshold to help individuals gain awareness of self, community, and the human condition.

Because of their strong commitment to inclusion and belonging, and civic engagement through art, I feel deeply honored to be recognized as one of the voices for making changes in our society. This year in the midst of the pandemic, fight against racism, and the presidential election campaigns, the healing and transformative power of art can be more than an inspiration but much needed sustenance for us to keep fighting. 

Thank you so much for your ongoing support! 

Charting the World: Subjective Map Making

Map of Saranac Lake and Surrounding Area, 1954

India Ink on BFK Rives Paper, 42.5"x 53", 2019

It's been a great fun to share my work besides such talented artists that I admire so much. It's hard to believe that a month already went by. Today is the last day for "Charting the World: Subjective Map Making" at the Suffolk University Gallery. What a great ride it has been!


Charting the World: Subjective Map Making
January 30 - February 27, 2020
Suffolk University Gallery
8 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA

What we call the 'world'... is not given as self-evident from the outset. It is apprehended...in an ongoing 'crisis' of spatial consciousness. E. Cassirer

For centuries, we have used maps to chart the world - from the body to the stars and everything in between. Both foreign and familiar, we can both lose and find ourselves. Mapping is a way of using spatial reasoning. Many contemporary artists use maps or refer to them in some way to inform their work: Google maps, imaginary maps, mind maps, genome mapping, data visualization, historical maps. The results are often reflective and personal. Questions abound: What is the meaning of a map in 2020? How has that changed with the abundance of possibilities available by way of our devices? How do we find the way to each other and back to ourselves?

Participating Artists:

In this exhibit Naoe Suzuki is represented by two bodies of work. In her Extinction Studies series, she researches maps of the Adirondack region and traces animals' names from the maps. On these maps, she was fascinated by finding so many places with animal names, such as "Little Otter Pond" or "Salmon River." Floating in the sea of blackness, these names become stars in the sky, constellations, and ghosts of memories of places she holds dear. The Water Is Taught by Thirst series was created by tracing waterways from topographical maps. The waterways were laser cut, leaving behind a crackled, sculptural terrain, evoking a sense of loss.

Kate McLean works at the intersection of human-perceived smellscapes, cartography and the communication of 'eye-invisible' sensed data. To achieve this, she leads public smellwalks internationally and translates the resulting data using digital design, watercolor, animation, scent diffusion and sculpture into smellscape mappings. Smells form part of our knowing, but are elusive, often disappearing before they can be pinned down. Smell experience is an invisible and currently under-presented dataset with strong connections to emotions and memory.

Heidi Whitman's drawings are cartographies of the subconscious that refer to time and memory as uncharted territory. She is interested in states of mind, how experience is translated into thought, and how dreams jumble reality. Maps of ancient ruins and contemporary cities are part of a layered network of pathways, spirals, and switchbacks that conflates the concrete world with the invisible mind. Each Mental Map drawing is constructed with layers of hand-cut paper, ink, and gouache.

Born in Taipei Taiwan, Yu-Wen Wu's subjectivity as an immigrant is central to her practice. Human migration and climate change are the defining issues of Wu's work.  At the crossroads of art, science, politics and cultural issues, her wide range of projects include large-scale drawings, site-specific video installations, community engaged practices and public art.

Deb Todd Wheeler's recent work, Radio Silence is a geo-located guided audio walk at Lost Pond Sanctuary in Brookline, MA. In a time before the world began to collapse around her, with the sudden death of her son and the suicide of her brother and in the depths of grief in 2019, she set out to record a group of songs with the LENNYcollective. For the artist, it became a healing journey, a walk through the soundtrack of her life. She says "this walk is for all of us who walk the wild edge of sorrow."
 
Teri Rueb's work combines sound and site using mobile media. One of the works represented in the exhibit Fens, is composed mainly from location recordings made in the Boston Back Bay Fens in different seasons, different weather, at different times of day and night. Inspired by Fredrick Law Olmsted's fascination with parks as confluences of natural and social processes, the piece takes up landscape as a site of interaction between human and non-human elements evoked through sound. The other Core Sample, is a GPS-based interactive sound walk and corresponding sound sculpture that evokes the material and cultural histories contained in and suggested by the landscape of Spectacle Island. The piece engages the extended landscape of Boston Harbor as bound by the Institute of Contemporary Art building on the Seaport waterfront, and Spectacle Island, a former dump and reclaimed landfill park visible just off the coast.

The exhibit is curated by Deborah Davidson.
 

Recent Newsletter: Celebrating Art and Science at the Broad and more

Read my most recent newsletter about "Celebrating Art and Science at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard" and the upcoming exhibit, "Charting the World: Subjective MapMaking" at the Suffolk University.

Library
Deaccessioned card catalog cabinets from the Harvard Fine Arts Library,
Petri dishes, laser cut vellum, lab tapes, and various lab tools in the drawers.
2016 - 2017

Currently installed at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Celebrating Art and Science at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

My work is being included in this group exhibition featuring works by past and current Artists-in-Residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. I'm happy to be finally showing my work at the place where I created them during my Artist-in-Residence. I'm showing an installation entitled Library and several pieces from Inscription drawings (translocation of double-stranded passage).

I feel honored to be showing my work in a group of such talented artists, Daniel Kohn, Gupi Ranganathan, Maskull Lasserre, and Lucy Kim.

Broad Institute is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary this year. This exhibit is a part of their Broad15 celebration. The exhibit is open by appointment only to the public. It is free, but must register on Eventbrite to make appointments.

Artists talk and reception is scheduled for January 14, 5-7pm at the Broad Institute, 415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA. It'll be held on the 2nd floor connector area where the exhibit is. It should be a great event!