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DISIDENTIFICATIONS

Asian-Americans often experience a sense of estrangement from or reaction against their cultural heritage, and yet, because society reads foreignness into their appearances, they are often asked to be a representative for that culture. Some may accept or embrace this identification, while others may reject it and work against society’s characterization. However, when a minority subject "disidentifies," when they neither accept nor fully reject society’s given identifications, we are left with a third option: to work within and around dominant cultural ideology towards the creation of new cultural identities and spaces within which minority populations can thrive, and ultimately break down socially accepted ideas of otherness.

Taking a cue from the book of the same name by José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications is an exhibition that explores the physical manifestations of artistic disidentificatory practice. This exhibition considers how three artists react or respond to the complex and intricate reality of cultural and physical identification. The works in the show struggle with ideas of perceived foreignness, the fluidity of culture and cultural belongingness, and societal identity, often towards a rejection of any notion of static or quantifiable identity. Unlike exhibitions or works that take the definition of personal or collective identity as their conceptual aim, this exhibition questions the relationship of identity to societal pressures and (mis)conceptions and re-examines the place or foundation of cultural identity and belonging through the lens of three Asian-American artists.

Kyan Bishop's installation, Belong, takes the universally familiar site of the bed as its start: a place of intimacy, comfort, and personal reflection. Yet by introducing the element of broken glass, symbolic of the complexities and difficulties of identity, Bishop also highlights the way that private space can be one of contestation and consternation. Bishop shows the bed as a site where questions of the consonance between one’s own identity and that perceived by society and the failures of human interactions arise.

Geraldine Lau's site-specific wall piece, grounds the viewer in the familiar by presenting a map of Maryland with colors signifying different elevations. Her use of maps is symbolic of the kind of ordering and categorization that causes separations and hierarchies in our own thinking about identities. But Lau’s work questions the normativity of the physical and conceptual distinctions made by boundary lines and differentiated colors by subtly shifting the edges, leaving imperfections and room for questioning within the work.

Yeni Mao's installation, Forecourt of the Stars, takes the famous star-studded walkway outside of Grauman’s Chinese theatre as its subject. Mao recreates an old map of the forecourt in wood, but removes the key elements of the foot and handprints as well as the names of the Hollywood stars, replacing them with numbers. Removing the Hollywood context places a spotlight instead on the modern appropriation of Asian culture that Grauman’s represents. The pieces of the puzzle are now for the viewer to decide, a kind of nostalgic disidentificatory "choose your own adventure."

Click here for more information on Kyan Bishop

Click here for more information on Geraldine Lau

Click here for more information on Yeni Mao