These are all the artists currently represented in this section:
Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art by
"Featuring works by twenty foreign-born artists of Asian parentage who have come to the United States to live and work, ‘Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art’ explores questions of bicultural identity as expressed in artworks by members of the fastest growing immigrant group in American today. The artists came from China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. They range from recent arrivals to thirty-year residents and work in a broad range of styles and mediums, including painting, installation, photography, drawing, and sculpture.’ This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition which toured the United States from 1994-1996. The accompanying essays provide a background for the understanding of the art produced by Asian Americans over the years. Written from historical, theoretical and artistic perspectives, the contributors study the issue of identity among these artists and their works. Biographical information of the participating artists is included." description written by Asia Art Archive
Asia as Method by
Centering his analysis in the dynamic forces of modern East Asian history, Kuan-Hsing Chen recasts cultural studies as a politically urgent global endeavor. He argues that the intellectual and subjective work of decolonization begun across East Asia after the Second World War was stalled by the cold war. At the same time, the work of deimperialization became impossible to imagine in imperial centers such as Japan and the United States. Chen contends that it is now necessary to resume those tasks, and that decolonization, deimperialization, and an intellectual undoing of the cold war must proceed simultaneously. Combining postcolonial studies, globalization studies, and the emerging field of "Asian studies in Asia," he insists that those on both sides of the imperial divide must assess the conduct, motives, and consequences of imperial histories. Chen is one of the most important intellectuals working in East Asia today; his writing has been influential in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and mainland China for the past fifteen years. As a founding member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society and its journal, he has helped to initiate change in the dynamics and intellectual orientation of the region, building a network that has facilitated inter-Asian connections. Asia as Method encapsulates Chen's vision and activities within the increasingly "inter-referencing" East Asian intellectual community and charts necessary new directions for cultural studies.
Asian American Art, 1850-1970 by
Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 is the first comprehensive study of the lives and artistic production of artists of Asian ancestry active in the United States before 1970. The publication features original essays by ten leading scholars, biographies of more than 150 artists, and over 400 reproductions of artwork, ephemera, and images of the artists. Aside from a few artists such as Dong Kingman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Yun Gee, artists of Asian ancestry have received inadequate historical attention, even though many of them received wide critical acclaim during their productive years. This pioneering work recovers the extraordinarily impressive artistic production of numerous Asian Americans, and offers richly informed interpretations of a long-neglected art history. To unravel the complexity of Asian American art expression and its vital place in American art, the texts consider aesthetics, the social structures of art production and criticism, and national and international historical contexts.Without a doubt, Asian American Art will profoundly influence our understanding of the history of art in America and the Asian American experience for years to come.
Asian American Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900-1970 by
This beautifully illustrated volume, companion book to the exhibition of the same name, presents the first comprehensive survey of work produced by artists of Asian descent in America during the first seven decades of the twentieth century. Featuring examples across many media and extending beyond ethnicity, Asian/American/Modern Art brings into focus an underrepresented and vital group within American art. Introduced by historian Gordon H. Chang and cocurator Mark Dean Johnson, with contributions by cocurator Daniell Cornell and Karin Higa, Sharon Spain, and ShiPu Wang, the book follows the exhibition's multiethnic and multidisciplinary approach. Rather than defining an Asian American art aesthetic, Asian/American/ Modern Art highlights the stylistic tensions and artistic influences apparent in the work of major artists including Chiura Obata, Yun Gee, Ruth Asawa, Isamu Noguchi, Nam June Paik, and Carlos Villa. Two areas of emphasis, the modernist matrix of the early twentieth century and the post-World War II period wherein artists developed new approaches, support the book's recurring themes of war and peace, urban life and community. This powerful book represents a major rewriting of American art history to include a population of artists whose significant contributions to twentieth-century American art have been, until now, largely ignored. Copub: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women by 
Drawing New Color Lines by
The global circulation of comics, manga, and other such visual mediums between North America and Asia produces transnational meanings no longer rooted in a separation between "Asian" and "American." Drawing New Color Lines explores the culture, production, and history of contemporary graphic narratives that depict Asian Americans and Asians. It examines how Japanese manga and Asian popular culture have influenced Asian American comics; how these comics and Asian American graphic narratives depict the "look" of race; and how these various representations are interpreted in nations not of their production. By focusing on what graphic narratives mean for audiences in North America and those in Asia, the collection discusses how Western theories about the ways in which graphic narratives might successfully overturn derogatory caricatures are themselves based on contested assumptions; and illustrates that the so-called odorless images featured in Japanese manga might nevertheless elicit interpretations about race in transnational contexts. With contributions from experts based in North America and Asia, Drawing New Color Lines will be of interest to scholars in a variety of disciplines, including Asian American studies, cultural and literary studies, comics and visual studies.
Fresh Talk, Daring Gazes by
Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes chronicles the blossoming of Asian American art and anticipates the growing democratization of American art and culture. Pairing work by twenty-four contemporary Asian American visual artists with responses provocatively drawn from cultural critics, other artists, activists, and intellectuals, this book explores themes of geographical movement, the sexuality of Asian bodies, colonization, miscegenation, hybrid forms of immigrant cultures, the loss of home, war, history, and memory. Elaine H. Kim's historical introduction charts the trajectory of Asian American art from the nineteenth century to the present, offering a comprehensive account of artists, major artworks, and major events. Commentaries by writers, artists, and cultural activists examine the work of visual artists such as Pacita Abad, Albert Chong, Y. David Chung, Allan deSouza, Michael Joo, Hung Liu, Yong Soon Min, Manuel Ocampo, PipoNguyen-Duy, Roger Shimomura, Carlos Villa, and Martin Wong. Prominent artists and critics such as Homi K. Bhabha, Luis Camnitzer, Enrique Chagoya, Gina Dent, Ellen Gallagher, Arturo Lindsay, Kobena Mercer, Griselda Pollock, Jolene Rickard, Faith Ringgold, Ella Shohat, Lowery Stokes Sims, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie offer thought-provoking reflections on each artist. Sharon Mizota's extended captions further elucidate the paintings, graphics, photography, installations, and mixed-media constructions under discussion. As a set of dialogues, simultaneously visual and textual, Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes encourages the cross-cultural conversation that is shaping the emerging art of Asian Americans and of the United States in general. Alternately personal, intellectual, aesthetic, and political, these essays and the art they consider provide unique perspectives on both the past and the future of American art.
Into Performance by
The 1960s was a time of incredible freedom and exploration in the art world, particularly in New York City, which witnessed the explosion of New Music, Happenings, Fluxus, New Dance, pop art, and minimalist art. Also notable during this period, although often overlooked, is the inordinate amount of revolutionary art that was created by women. Into Performance fills a critical gap in both American and Japanese art history as it brings to light the historical significance of five women artists-Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, and Shigeko Kubota. Unusually courageous and self-determined, they were among the first Japanese women to leave their country-and its male-dominated, conservative art world-to explore the artistic possibilities in New York. They not only benefited from the New York art scene, however, they played a major role in the development of international performance and intermedia art by bridging avant garde movements in Tokyo and New York. This book traces the pioneering work of these five women artists and the socio-cultural issues that shaped their careers. Into Performance also explores the transformation of these artists' lifestyle from traditionally confined Japanese women to internationally active artists. Yoshimoto demonstrates how their work paved the way for younger Japanese women artists who continue to seek opportunities in the West today.
Korean Contemporary Art by
This unique survey examines the contemporary art scene in Korea, which is one of the most dynamic and least known areas of the contemporary art world. The works of today's Korean artists are rarely found between the pages of any general art book, yet they have become a major force in the global art world. Korea is rich with internationally renowned painters, photographers, and multi-media artists. This book features Korea's most talented and prolific artists and their works, from the powerful and grand-scale installations of Do Ho Suh and the eye-popping sculptures of Choi Jeong-Hwa to the minimalist performance of Kimsooja, and the intellectually challenging videos and sculptures of Michael Joo. The artists' diverse bodies of work often deal with issues relating to tradition, politics, society, alienation, identity, and popular culture. This generously illustrated and engagingly written volume offers a concise introduction to the world of contemporary Korean art.
Leading the Way by
Irene Poon's book pays tribute to 25 Asian American artists she has known and photographed during her own distinguished career. She has compiled a book about the pioneers she found to emulate when she began creating images of the world around her, both within and beyond her own San Francisco Chinatown. Selected art works and photographic portraits provide an insightful introduction to the Asian American artists active from the 1930s through the 1960s. Many of these artists continue to be productive in the 21st century. Poon's sensitive portraits of senior Asian American artists from California, Hawaii, Washington State, and New York City has great significance for Asian Pacific American studies and the history of art in America. Among the artists included are George Tsutakawa, Mineacute; Okubo, Johsel Namkung, and Jade Snow Wong.
Local Invisibility, Postcolonial Feminisms: Asian American Contemporary Artists in California by
This book offers gendered, postcolonial insights into the poetic and artistic work of four generations of female Asian American artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nancy Hom, Betty Kano, Flo Oy Wong, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Theresa H.K. Cha, and Hung Liu are discussed in relation to the cultural politics of their time, and their art is examined in light of the question of what it means to be an Asian American artist. Laura Fantone's exploration of this dynamic, understudied artistic community begets a sensitive and timely reflection on the state of Asian American women in the USA and in Californian cultural institutions.
One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now by
"Contemporary Asian American artists with a strong sense of being American and an acute critical consciousness of world matters grapple with issues of identity in a way that sets them apart from their predecessors. Whereas many Asian American artists of a previous generation directly referred to an Asian sense of self in their works, it can be argued that younger Asian American artists only sometimes make reference to it or omit it entirely. This creatively designed book focuses on recent works by seventeen Asian American artists born in the late 1960s and 1970s including Patty Chang, Kaz Oshiro, and Jean Shin to explore this pivotal generation of artists, the prevalent themes in their art, and the different ways they configure identity in their work. One Way or Another features examples of painting, sculpture, and video and installation art many previously unpublished and includes essays that discuss the shifting meaning of Asian America over the last decade and address the issues of mixed heritage and the emergence of an evolving Asian American identity in an increasingly globalized society."
Orientalism by
More than three decades after its first publication, Edward Said's groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East has become a modern classic. In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.
Queering Contemporary Asian American Art by
"Queering Contemporary Asian American Art takes Asian American differences as its point of departure, and brings together artists and scholars to challenge normative assumptions, essentialisms, and methodologies within Asian American art and visual culture. Taken together, these nine original artist interviews, cutting-edge visual artworks, and seven critical essays explore contemporary currents and experiences within Asian American art, including the multiple axes of race and identity; queer bodies and forms; kinship and affect; and digital identities and performances. Using the verb and critical lens of 'queering' to capture transgressive cultural, social, and political engagement and practice, the contributors to this volume explore the connection points in Asian American experience and cultural production of surveillance states, decolonization and diaspora, transnational adoption, and transgender bodies and forms, as well as heteronormative respectability, the military, and war. The interdisciplinary and theoretically informed frameworks in the volume engage readers to understand global and historical processes through contemporary Asian American artistic production."--Publisher description.
They Painted From Their Hearts: Pioneer Asian American Artists by
Examines the work of 18 Asian Pacific American artists creating in the Pacific Northwest during the period from 1900 to 1960. Essays on art in Seattle, Asian American painters of Washington state, early Asian American photographers, and the legacy of Asian American art accompany color paintings
The Third Mind by
The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 illuminates the dynamic and complex impact of Asian art, literary texts and philosophical concepts on American artistic practices from the late nineteenth century through the present. Released to accompany a major survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Third Mind traces how the classical arts of India, China and Japan and the systems of Hindu, Taoist, Tantric Buddhist and Zen Buddhist thought that were collectively admired as the "East" were known, reconstructed and transformed by American cultural, intellectual and political forces. Featuring 270 objects in an array of media including painting, works on paper, books and ephemera, sculptures, video art and installations, this richly illustrated catalogue also includes scholarly essays by museum curators and academics specializing in art history, intellectual history, Asian studies and Postcolonial religious and cultural studies and representing a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.
Troubling Borders by
Juxtaposing short stories, poetry, painting, and photographs, Troubling Borders showcases the creative work of women of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Thai, and Filipino ancestry. This thematically arranged collection interrupts borders of categorization and gender, in what preface author Shirley Geok-Lin Lim describes as a "leap over the barbed fences that have kept these women apart in these, our United States of America." The sixty-two contributors have been shaped by colonization, wars, globalization, and militarization. For some of these women on the margins of the margin, crafting and showing their work is a bold act in itself. Their provocative and accessible creations tell unique stories, provide sharp contrasts to familiar stereotypes--Southeast Asian women as exotic sex symbols, dragon ladies, prostitutes, or "bar girls"--and serve as entry points for broader discussions about questions of history, memory, and identity.
Unnamable: The Ends of Asian American Art by
Redraws the contours of Asian American art, attempting to free it from a categorization that stifles more than it reveals. Charting its historical conditions and the expansive contexts of its emergence, Susette Min challenges the notion of Asian American art as a site of reconciliation or as a way for marginalized artists to enter into the canon or mainstream art scene. Pressing critically on the politics of visibility and how this categorization reduces artworks by Asian American artists within narrow parameters of interpretation, Unnamable reconceives Asian American art not as a subset of objects, but as a medium that disrupts representations and embedded knowledge. By approaching Asian American art in this way, Min refigures the way we see Asian American art as an oppositional practice, less in terms of its aspirations to be seen--its greater visibility--and more in terms of how it models a different way of seeing and encountering the world. Uniquely presented, the chapters are organized thematically as mini-exhibitions, and offer readings of select works by contemporary artists including Tehching Hsieh, Byron Kim, Simon Leung, Mary Lum, and Nikki S. Lee. Min displays a curatorial practice and reading method that conceives of these works not as "exemplary" instances of Asian American art, but as engaged in an aesthetic practice that is open-ended. Ultimately, Unnamable insists that in order to reassess Asian American art and its place in art history, we need to let go not only of established viewing practices, but potentially even the category of Asian American art itself.
Unsettled Visions by
In Unsettled Visions, the activist, curator, and scholar Margo Machida presents a pioneering, in-depth exploration of contemporary Asian American visual art. Machida focuses on works produced during the watershed 1990s, when surging Asian immigration had significantly altered the demographic, cultural, and political contours of Asian America, and a renaissance in Asian American art and visual culture was well underway. Machida conducted extensive interviews with ten artists working during this transformative period: women and men of Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese descent, most of whom migrated to the United States. In dialogue with the artists, Machida illuminates and contextualizes the origins of and intent behind bodies of their work. Unsettled Visions is an engrossing look at a vital art scene and a subtle account of the multiple, shifting meanings of "Asianness" in Asian American art. Analyses of the work of individual artists are grouped around three major themes that Asian American artists engaged with during the 1990s: representations of the Other; social memory and trauma; and migration, diaspora, and sense of place. Machida considers the work of the photographers Pipo Nguyen-duy and Hanh Thi Pham, the printmaker and sculptor Zarina Hashmi, and installations by the artists Tomie Arai, Ming Fay, and Yong Soon Min. She examines the work of Marlon Fuentes, whose films and photographs play with the stereotyping conventions of visual anthropology, and prints in which Allan deSouza addresses the persistence of Orientalism in American popular culture. Machida reflects on Kristine Aono's museum installations embodying the multigenerational effects of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and on Y. David Chung's representations of urban spaces transformed by migration in works ranging from large-scale charcoal drawings to multimedia installations and an "electronic rap opera."
War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art by
War Baby / Love Child examines hybrid Asian American identity through a collection of essays, artworks, and interviews at the intersection of critical mixed race studies and contemporary art. The book pairs artwork and interviews with nineteen emerging, mid-career, and established mixed race/mixed heritage Asian American artists, including Li-lan and Kip Fulbeck, with scholarly essays exploring such topics as Vietnamese Amerasians, Korean transracial adoptions, and multiethnic Hawai'i. As an increasingly ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation is coming of age in an era of "optional identity," this collection brings together first-person perspectives and a wider scholarly context to shed light on changing Asian American cultures. Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch'v=kJp0MDtKqyY&list=UUge4MONgLFncQ1w1C_BnHcw&index=2&feature=plcp
Why Asia? by
Why Asia?: Contemporary Asian and Asian American Art is a ground-breaking investigation into two overlapping and rapidly emerging areas in contemporary art. Extricating them from their current confusion under a generic "Asian" label, Yang reveals the specificity of each. The book consists of lucid discussions on individual artists, exhibitions and theoretical issues. With over sixty illustrations it serves to introduce the current landscape of Asian and Asian American Art, with essays on art in China, Taiwan and North America, as well as individual essays on leading artists such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Xu Bing and Michael Joo. Above all, Yang explores the challenges that contemporary Asian and Asian American art poses to artists, critics, curators and viewers alike. In particular, she reflects on the complexities of exhibition practice, the role of identity politics in arts, the unspoken assumptions of Western critics faced with Asian art, and the difficulties faced by artists working between cultures. This is a major critical contribution in an area where criticism conspicuously lags behind artistic practice.
Yong Soon Min by
Catalog for an exhibition held at the Krannert Art Museum, Dec. 5, 1997-Jan. 25, 1998.
Chinatown Art Brigade: Resisting Gentrification Through the Power of Art, Culture and Stories by
The Chinatown Art Brigade is a collective of Asian American artists, media makers and activists with roots in NY Chinatown. Since its founding in 2015 by artists Betty Yu, ManSee Kong and Tomie Arai, The Chinatown Art Brigade has facilitated a series of community led responses to gentrification and displacement, created in partnership with the Chinatown Tenants Union, a programme of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities. Our work is driven by a deep love for our community and the fundamental belief that fighting against racial and economic inequity must be central to our cultural and art making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Monsoon (Urbana, Ill.) by
"A journal of Asian American art and writing."
Description based on: Fall/winter 1994.
New Critical Directions: Transnationalism and Diaspora in Asian American Art by 
Beyond 'Japanese/Women Artists' by
"The artists Nobuho Nagasawa and Chiharu Shiota defy the typical profile of ‘Japanese/women artists’. They were educated in Europe and have both lived in Berlin. They have resided in cosmopolitan cities outside Japan and exhibited their works globally over the last decade. Their travels helped them attain the perspective of the ‘outsider’ and enriched their artistic creation. Their mobility also lent complexity to their identities, which could no longer be pigeon-holed according to ethnic or cultural origin. These artists’ career paths and their growing reception in the global art scene pose important questions about being an artist of Asian origin working outside one's home country. Through in-depth analysis this article demonstrates how the work of these two artists transcends the conventionally held presumptions regarding ‘Japanese/women artists’. It also considers how they both internalize cultural displacement within their work, while catalysing artistic dialogue beyond national and cultural borders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]"
Art to Art Expressions by Asian American Women by
Asian-American women artists Pacita Abad, Yong Soon Min, Hung Liu and Barbara Takenaga profiled by film and video artists Christine Chang, Christine Choy, Karen Kaul and Chuleenan Svetvilas.
