CVA Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Abby Chen

[Music] hi everybody my name is sharon louden and i'm the artistic director of chautauqua visual arts and we are here today the whole team of visual arts and chicago institution to welcome you to the chautauqua visual arts lecture series and today we have a fantastic person coming to talk with us we have abby chen who is the uh head of contemporary art at the asian art asia asian art museum in san francisco before she took over that position in 2019 she was the artistic director at the chinese culture foundation also in san francisco where she was able to transform the organization into an open and process driven platform for contemporary art practice so abby has organized a lot of exhibitions too many to actually include here but some of them have included a lot of social based experiments and with many artists and actually we were just talking about a really fantastic artist who i'm really a big fan of uh christine wong yap who's really wonderful who we will be bringing to chautauqua this summer in professional development for our uh current and hopefully alumni participants of our school of art i should also share with you that um the reason why abby's here with us today is she was introduced to me by one of our mentors our luminous lead faculty members alpesh kantala patel who is extremely generous and um he and abby have worked together on many things and abby abby has actually contributed an essay about her life and work um in a book that um alpesh and yasmine have uh edited it's called storytellers living and sustaining a creative life and that is coming out i believe either end of this year or early next year so if you can't get enough of abby here you can read about her life in alpesh and yasmine's new book that's coming out so uh also to just say before we uh bring abby on i'm thrilled to announce that chautauqua visual arts and the asia art museum are partnering together to be able to bring some of the artists that abby is working with from asia and brings over from asia to chautauqua to be able to hear from them see them work and to partner to benef at the benefit of many artists that she works with and also the artists that come to chautauqua so i'm super thrilled about that there's a bright future ahead and we're working on that to contribute to chautauqua institution and everyone who visits so without further ado i'm so excited to see abby here and abby come on in i would love for you to come in and i'll just say to that um abby hi it's great hi everyone thank you very much for being here we're super thrilled i'm excited to see you on the back end to be able to have a q a with our audience and everybody i'll just share with you you can either do that by chat or come with us uh on the screen and we'll be able to have a nice conversation after but i'm excited to learn from you abby thank you very much oh thank you sharon and i'm excited to be here and i want to thank you and the chautauqua institute for having me and every time um we're we're talking in front of a new group i got the opportunity to share our work with new audiences and i'm just looking at the chat and people coming from seattle and also palo alto so definitely hoping uh bruce and ali will come to hr museum that now that we just reopened and welcome everybody who come to san francisco even though this is not a great time to travel but when you can we would love to have you visiting our museum because we're doing some wonderful things so with that uh i think that we uh will start um our today's presentation and again my name is abby chen i'm the head of contemporary art department at the asian art museum and this is a new department that was founded in 2019 when i joined um and i'm very very excited about this opportunity uh because i think that we have um we have built a tremendous platform for artists which i will introduce you know later um in a later time and with that uh let me just show you what our museum look like now after the groundbreaking transformation so i'll go to the next slide so what you see is a architectural rendition at a time when we're envisioning the expansion of the museum the hr museum was founded more than 50 years ago and in 2003 we moved to the civic center just across from the city hall and in 2017 we embarked on this transformation project and it was completed in 2019 and that's also the time that um i joined and so what you're seeing this rendition is at the time we're envisioning what this building will look like in the civic center district as well as the tenderloin district where it's an extreme diverse community where a lot of southeast asian immigrants live and also there's a very big homeless um population and community live there as well so we know it's important to think about the museum's position in this neighborhood and our director jay xu had this vision to turn the museum inside out so how are we going to bring what is inside of the museum to the street and also all to connect the museum with the public life and i'll talk more about that with the project that we did and um in 2019 our goal was to have this grand grand opening for this completion of the historical project which is the akiko yamasaki and jerian pavilion and with the east-west terrace that is the rooftop and then kovi hits but what we were doing at the time we were not thinking there's going to be a pandemic but then they're even more timely as now that we're looking back so the first one that went up to the wilbur gallery which is um behind this glass wall and is on the second floor from the street is chanel miller's work i was i am i will be and this went up on view um in 2020 and i was um i was very adamant about talking about her work first for this presentation especially for the very reason that the asian community facing really this urgent and extreme violence that we're having um we're having in this country but violence against asian is nothing new for many of us uh immigrants here in the united states in 1882 the introduction of the chinese exclusion act all the way to the 1980s the vincent chen case for this for this chinese man on the night before his wedding day and got beaten to death um with a baseball bat by two white men and um those kind of situation continue to repeat itself and women fighting in court such as helen zia fighting for the vincent chen case and also chanel miller fighting her own case at the time for the being the victim of the stanford sexual assault is also the story that many people still don't know but it's important for us as a cultural institution to tell that story through art so chanel miller uh when we invited her and we invited her to the space knowing that we're gonna have this new platform uh and to be the amplifier of the asian american artist now many people know chanel miller through the book but also the the book i uh i highly recommend called know my name and oprah winfrey uh introduced uh the book in her show as well and many people actually got to know chanel's writing when she did the impact statement on the court when she read them aloud and then later on she had this book know my name and then it was also through that process that i learned that chanel is also a wonderful artist so the asian art museum invited her to create this large mural in our wilbur gallery which is part of the expansion and this is the work that you can actually see from the street and especially at night because in daytime the glare of the window make it sometimes difficult to see the work in its entirety but then at night this almost like a beacon in the dark and um for people passing that street at night they will be able to see this work in uh in clarity and again when i when i'm talking about this work um when we curate the work we do not know there's gonna be a pandemic but then the the topic and the theme and the the character that she has created was so timely so at the time in 2020 when we installed this this piece it became a healing for the city and uh together with the other two work that i will be introducing they are really the love letter that we as a museum give to the neighborhood and uh right to write to the city who ride to the city that we have never seen that was this devastated there's no cars no people on the street all the business were closed and when you're passing by this work and it have that healing effect and kind of like a message to many of us who were suffering um from this this pandemic and kind of giving us a sense of hope as well so that's the work that chanel has created and this is her portrait and if you go inside of the gallery this is what you will see um and you know the museum was closed and um so again the work was very timely to think about that this is something that people can have a sense of ownership by walking on the street and see this uh see this work so um and if you want to know more about chanel miller and it's very easy to see a lot of her information that you can google from online and also that she uh starting to have um not necessarily a column but she started to draw for new york times and i highly recommend that uh going to her instagram to see a lot of joints that she created whether in response to the pandemic or in response to the violence against asian uh communities so um so definitely you know this is the kind of voices that we would like to amplify and uplift and um and again this is the work that you will see if you visit san francisco and be and then below chanel miller on the street level uh this is another work jennifer waffer's pattern recognition and this is a very vibrant work and again if you go to civic center you go to the neighborhood we are surrounded by these uh grayish concrete building that doesn't necessarily offer the neighborhood uh this sense of vibrancy and uh colorful uh sort of encounters so um so in this you know lor lawrence and gradually high street uh our wall that's what we call it this is a mural that is 7 by 30 foot long and it the intent is to host ongoing series of commissioned public artwork and right now it's viewable and it has become this place for people to take selfies at and people hang out in this um in front of this murals and this is by jennifer watford a filipino american artist of asian descent who um a filipino-american artist who was born in san francisco and she made this mural um trying to honor nine historically important american artists of asian descent who are active in san francisco bay area and this comic book style speech bubbles pop up from a colorful background and to shout out names such as russo-sala bernie spain and carlos villa and again each column or or behind each name for example the one that jennifer is posing the russo sour one you will see the pattern of ruso sawa's work but also that jennifer did a lot of research at the asian art museum and to look into the southeast asian collection that the museum had because those are the collections of very often got overshadowed by our east asia collection so jennifer made an effort to look into the southeast asian collection and the patterns such as vietnamese culture thailand artifacts cambodia and so she draw from those patterns and created and enlarge them onto this mural and so for people who are from this um this southeast asian culture or background when they pass by this wall they will recognize some of the references and so it's almost like a secret code to invite people uh to explore and seeing something new from the familiar or seeing some from you know or seeing the familiarity from something new is um another layer of the work that she has created and this is yeah and as i said that's a seven by thirty foot long uh work and so um one of the things about uh this work is that it's facing the street the street so um as a you know as a mural uh as a public art um of course um it will experience such as graffiti or vandalism but i'm happy to report that since the installation of this work it has been uh kept pretty well uh there are packs from here and there from time to time but we we have prepared for it and our museum has done a wonderful job in safe keeping it and maintain this work so if you come to san francisco again even when the museum is closed you can pass by and see this lovely work and this is a view at night so if you pass by high street at night you will see the chanel miller work got lit up and right now it's winter so the tree doesn't have the leaves and so you will get to see the work even more clear but at the time we were also talking about what does it mean to have this tree and you cannot see it in its totality like there's no uh there's nothing blocking the view but it's almost like you're navigating it you're walking into a forest and then you see the spirit um and it's a little bit like a peekaboo and also a very explorative exploratory into the work and then on our rooftop the east-west bank terrace this is the work by the artist jess sharon jiva and the title is called don't mess with me and it's viewable from the streets below sharon jeeva is a street artist based in mumbai who designed this image and she grew up in the bay area and this is work that also known as the pink lady which depicts an indian woman with a raised fist and with this breast knuckle that spell out the word boom and the pink lady first appeared on the street of mumbai in response to several to this um gang rape um and several men charged in a high-profile uh this gang rape case in delhi in 2012. so and for sharon jiva it's important to talk about why that these three artists were chosen because they're all from the bay area and then they all have this deep root from the bay area jennifer was born in san francisco and chanel miller was born and raised in palo alto and jazz was brought up in berkeley and the um the mission the mission district mural and the skateboard culture of san francisco deeply influenced her so um she is a self-taught mural artist and then so she after she moved to mumbai she started to make a lot of street art so this idea of bringing the pink lady from the street of mumbai to back to the bay area and to put it onto the rooftop is really this idea of that we want to honor this piece and we want to have the pink lady watch over us on the high street and makalitra street and giving people below a sense of safety a sense of protection and a message of our stand in fighting against gender violence so again this you know this phenomenon that we're experiencing in the country for uh asian experiencing the violence and in this pandemic time in this difficult time is nothing new it's similar to the muslim and the south asian experiencing after 9 11. so um it's i would say it it's woven throughout our curating um when we think about uh engaging with a contemporary artist uh the message that they bring and the agency that we would like to have and then the canon that we wanted to change so this is you know this is what that first uh came to the museum uh during the pandemic um when we cannot open so we have this first rework that we were preparing that rolled out at the same time with the transformation project but as the pandemic hits the museum was closed the three work still stands but even more relevant than ever so on that note it's it's something that was not necessarily planned but again if we follow that core of why we do art and uh and why the museum is still relevant in today's culture um and society and i hope that these artists are the living proof for that so um and you know to talk about you know these highlighting these artists many of them are not necessarily world famous artists and for jennifer watford in her work honoring the nine asian american artists is really to again bring out this issue and topic about these artists being you know significant in their work but then have long been ignored and excluded from the mainstream american art history and so um with waffles celebrate them with pattern drawn from these artists practice and with the museum now honoring these three young women artists and celebrate their work is really important and so and emphasizing these uh artists that not only uh from the east asian heritage but also the southeast asian heritage and also south asian heritage um is very important um so and again you know asian itself is this kind of constructed idea of these geographical location but still um it's important for us to think about what that means and also highlight the artist that is very active in that culture and with um with the region as well so that's the outside and now i would like to take you inside zhang chong bin i look for the sky and zheng chong bin is also a bay area artist that is also a first generation immigrant artist that been in the bay area for almost 30 years and this is the museum um bogar court and you can see some of his joints but i would like to point to the right side of the slide where that you see previously what this north court or bulgar court looked like and it's kind of like a under uh underused public space and a common space within the museum because the museum has very strict code on how artwork needs to be preserved and treated so they're all in the gallery that has not only the security control but also the humidity and temperature control so outside of the gallery for a museum that with a lot of archaeological objects that area doesn't have um most of no doesn't have any i would say the artwork in the collection so when i was you know uh when i was hired and looking at the space and thinking about what contemporary art means for asian art museum want to think exteriorly which are the murals that you just saw and then also how to think about this interior space and what does that mean so this underutilized space of bulgar court uh needs to be activated and the person that came to mind is zhong chong bin i mean in the future i would love to just introduce you know have a presentation just to introduce his you know uh like over of his work but uh today we're just gonna touch on very quickly and so this installation is a methodologically uh engineered structure mounted with an array of staggered panels that vary in transparency and pattern and the layered let me see if i have yeah okay so the layered acrylic and optical film sheets will filter and warp and refract the light from the overhead so when we create this work we know that it was the time that we're going to have the election uh even uh abs abstraction is uh zhong chong bin's uh kind of uh creative um outlet um it was the election was very much uh in his mind and so he conceptualized this work with the awareness of the election as well as the museum-wide vision of connecting the outside of the museum to the inside and this work is also inspired by the architect gaolantes original design of the court and gay olente originally said when she was transforming this um the site which used to be the san francisco's main library was that this library was way too dark and she needed to introduce the light and she said let the light comes in so she and i always say that when we do art this is a rayleigh because it's one generation after another it's not just by one person or one generation so as galente introduced the light into the museum now it is uh zhengchong bin's term to sculpt the light so uh and she and and and for gay olente i think that she introduced the light and hoping probably uh other artists will come in and do something with the light and sure enough zhengchong bin applies the light but also the influence of california light and space movement to this work and resulting a moving painting that draw from his earlier practice primarily in abstract ink painting and then the work continue to get extended into the osher gallery so what you feel is connecting to the outside with that structural installation then as we go inside of the gallery it connected to our inner self and um [Music] so this um this idea is uh making you know connecting the outside but at the same time it's also about the body and um when we go into the ocean gallery a cent you know its center consists of chamber made from scrim and inside uh it has the distorted video from several projectors and ambient noises and it's very hard to describe them without you know the visual and without the audience experiencing it so again i strongly recommend you know uh for those in the bay area come to visit the show and for those of you who couldn't travel yet i hope that will be an opportunity for you to experience the work and across from our ocean gallery and on the same floor we also had a new gallery rededicated to the contemporary art collection because previously the museum doesn't have a gallery dedicated to uh the contemporary art collection and also the contemporary art collection was recent was only uh started in the uh recent 10 years um and then so in the osher gallery we are showing uh this collection rotation uh and the name is i'm giving it a name called memento and um featuring two large scale iconic work from two artists jaishuri jakarti as well as the hong kong-based artist london pong that explore the urban spatial politics through the lens of memory again one is this really the almost like a mapping a layered mapping of one's um in this case uh jai shri jakar varti seeing um the city of kolkata the urbanization of that and growing up in the suburb of kolkata and to see how rapidly uh that this city changed and this is a reflection um of what she was feeling inside uh it's a it's a marvelous piece and it was a very correct uh and it was created at a um very important stage of the artist and then um the artist london pong um you know uh this is the work that was uh taken uh the scene from uh his homeland hong kong and um with the aesthetics um that is very uh reminiscent to his practice as a painter but it's also an interactive piece where as the viewer coming to see this work you'll see your own shadow also get projected to the screen and it's a it's an invitation by both artists to allow the audience to walk into their art and to have this kind of bodily encounter off the piece and this lens of memory and also seeing the rapid change whether is through urbanization or through political repression um is uh being illustrated very proactively and coach poetically and subtly by these two artists and it's important to know that while these work are created at a critical juncture of the artist practice we are also the first museum in north america to have acquired the work by these two artists so um and i wish you know uh uh you will know more about the work if you cannot travel so on our website you should be able to see the interview uh and also the um the video clips of um how the artwork can be viewed and what the artists are saying about their work and um and for london i think the the work really depicts this rapidly changing hong kong and this uh landscape that reflects the outside world but it's filtered through his inner world and um the memory of home uh for both jakarta and london i think um they you know they they were trying to really capture this fleeting moment whether it's through the abstract form or street through the landscape and obscuring these memories and uh evoking scattered recollection of the disappearing past so um and as we just opened for a few days the uh response has been overwhelming and um i just really wish the artists could be here we invited both them to come and we still hope that they will be able to come this year when it's safer to travel so that they can see their work themselves in this part of the continent so um these two collection uh you know this two work in our collection uh represents the value and breadth of our developing contemporary art collection and this is only the beginning of our curatorial vision for this part of the collection and um the vision uh i would like to think that it's centered on innovation and creative survival in this rapidly changing world how am i doing on time chip i'm just trying to be conscious um and then i'll talk about um after hope after hope is in our league gallery and it's a experimental project that i i'm hoping to continue as a series so after hope is consists of 54 short videos that are recommended and sourced around the world and it's not a typical screening program that the audience will follow a schedule the total length of the the videos if all of them get played is nearly six hours so nobody is expected to finish all the work to finish watching all the works because as visitors walk into the gallery that is also filled with street posters the encounter of a work that could take one to the market of myanmar a monologue of an unapologetic asian american woman or sharing sound of tear gas in hong kong and without a fixed timetable on what's on the screen at the moment just like the world we don't know what's going to hit next and as the audience stands or sit between the video on one side of the room and the wall of the ephemeris on the other the gallery is intentionally not dimmed to total let me see not dimmed to total darkness uh because um not like a total darkness like in a cinema that draws the audience into an environment the video creates because um instead we actually um create this room for the audience to make to be made aware of their own presence when navigating what's in motion and what's being the action um and what is being act upon so when we say that we were sourcing uh these uh posters and informations from the artists they could be uh the history that got compiled by the artist such as the uranium modern history or what happened in myrma in 1988 august 8 the very important movement and very few people know about and the street posters that were created and populated in hong kong and during the pandemic at the very early stage of the pandemic we already see that this pandemic how is um instigating the racism against asian in this country and we were working with um stop describing discriminate asian this collective to create posters and bring awareness to a lot of events and encourage people to report a lot of incidents and the posters are you know as a result that they are here and then we also organized a lot of working groups that are close section because many these artists actually don't know each other um it's 54 short videos but it's more than 60 artists behind this work so we organize these closed sections inviting artists to meet each other and talk about this idea of hope and how everybody else was coping uh there was one time when we were invite uh writing this after after hope artist from assad by zhong and um it was literally wartime uh you know assabaijang and he wasn't sure if he was able to get internet but he managed to join us and those are some of the situations that are that we're we're witnessing but then at the same time this idea of building solidarity among asian and asian diaspora and also this creative resistance is really important uh it's a really important role that the museum can take so that is about the um after hope and recently i was interviewed by hyper allergic after hope and i talked about the components of after hope we know that there's the video on the screen and then this ephemeral wall uh we we're all also calling it the hope wall and then also we have this afterhope.com which is the online platform that documents the project that feature the additional writings and the events that were populated and generated organically by after hope because traditionally asian art museum is really a museum of archaeology item historical artifacts and it's not necessarily known as a place for artists and of course for you know the contemporary art department newly founded in this museum one of um the first step i'm thinking is how that we can welcome and uh invite artists but also provide this platform to amplify their voices so um so after hope.com is created for that reason not necessarily as a museum announcement type of placeholder but really a side of the engagement a new new kind of site for the engagement um it's my co-curator is pema de melen uh who is the professor at uh cal poly art and architecture department so he has been facilitating a lot of these dialogues and it's very important for us to think about this kind of partnership when we're working with a traditional museum that the the process of putting program and exhibition together has a very embedded system so uh the the museum's way uh to um to launch a lot of exhibitions and program uh need to follow some very strict guidelines and so working with the co-curator um and the co-curator also having this kind of platform that can address a lot of these needs and facilitation with flexibility is important but also a crucial strategy when we're thinking about the new approaches to innovate museums process um and it was through this um it was through the installation of all of this work i started to get an idea on what it means to treat and artwork in a traditional museum and i have to say i have gained so much more admiration on how the museum conserved the object from the moment it was identified to the time that it was presented and on display and to me that is an art form on its own but the question when i was interviewed by hyper allergic is to think about as a museum when we have you know dedicated um so much resources to this care of object and this piece this slice of civilization then for the contemporary art how do we transfer this museum's sense of care for object to the care of human being and to issue that human beings are dealing with and that is a question i ask myself that as a curator as a contemporary curator uh inside of hdr museum how could we address that issue because that's the issue i um i'm i'm i've been thinking uh as i curate and um the the dimension that we could offer the new dimension that we could offer to the museum and rethink what the museum for is really important so um so i want to talk about you know after hope uh with this idea of you know what is the hope that we can go after and i think that this is the joint attempt not just you know between uh the museum and independent curator uh and also these artists from all over the world but this is also this idea of develop new curatorial research practices and uh cultivate this um active engagement uh with within the structure of the museum and what kind of methodology that is needed um in order to imagine new ways of presenting and mediating uh contemporary art and cultural production so um so this this idea um that having the object from the ancient past or the recent ones you know made by these contemporary artists i think they very often um when they're presented in this tangible form they could easily be embraced by the art historical canon uh and exhibited um and then this morning i was even talking to this critic in asia and um you know baffled again baffled by this idea that why that they're they're so easily embraced um and then he used the word like yeah that's kind of like wholesale but the question i have also is what about the activism and the embodies research that are deeply connected to the artist's practice and and process they are not able to influence or modify institutional mode of working or policies and can can we change that so so by experimenting with a project like after hope while that we're mobilizing so many different kind of factors in the field and probably beyond um i hope that you know that could be a way um to to to address not just in the era of pandemic but also this kind of political upheaval everywhere that we're seeing um so so those are the the kind of questions i have in mind and i know today we have um we have our historian we have artists and you know um community organizers and institutional uh executives right so um to think about you know this not just as a a new mode of creating but i think at the time when asian american community is scapegoated for the pandemic as you know our seniors are brutally attacked and our families and friends in asia are under extreme suppression all of these points to the systematic violence whether it's led by white supremacy or by a totalitarian regime we don't have a place to facilitate these kind of conversations that are nuanced they're empathetic and also that that is actually safe so so i'm hoping with these kind of projects um that we we need to think about and i don't have any script with me so um we need to think about that institutions cannot be um institutions of statement generating we can't just roll out that statement and say that okay we denounced this and that but how is being done through the work um so i and again you know all of these are questions they're not answers and um so um so i think you know by talking about um my thinking process the curatorial process along with the artwork that are on view both from the street uh how that we're turning the museum inside out um introducing chanel miller jennifer watford jess sharon jiva to the inside uh jashree jakarvarte london pong jeong chong bin as well as um the the the after hope artist um this really you know i would like to think that it's the first of its kind in asian art museum and um it's it's launched by a young department a young is we're still at our infancy state and there's a chinese word uh like when you don't know enough you don't know what the fear is so i kind of think that we launched all of this artwork um without really understanding um the museum system too well and we just did it and i have to i have to give a shout out to all my colleagues in the museum as well as the uh director um jeshu that they have this belief uh without even knowing you know the detail of what we're gonna put up and um when we invited chanel miller we did not know what she's gonna create and uh when we uh were asking uh these artists and collectives uh and telling them you know after hope many of them um you know at the time do not know what kind of artwork they're going to share with us and there are there are even work that made specifically for after hope so um i i hope that collectively both from my you know colleagues in other departments because it's really not about the contemporary department it's the installation it's museum services it's registration conservation um public program marketing uh development all of them have to be mobilized um and i i hope that this will con you know not only demonstrates i i think we'll you know figure out a way to sustain it that this collective commitment to um to uplift the voices from the ground and to give um to give uh to give platforms of resistance and to build um to build solidarity um and um [Music] and creativity of uh thought and action so um i don't have you know i don't i don't i wish i have something like more punchy or something but um it's really more about practicing it doing it and figuring out um and these are the kind of work that i think can lead us to the path and when i now looking back to see all this work that i just mentioned i have to i continue to see all the flaws in them uh the the things i didn't do well and those things keep on coming to my mind but um but i uh at the same time i just want to share with you this this process of how these work come into the being and um and so i i i went off a little like off track as i was thinking about after hope because it was also thinking you know in my in my head um [Music] and uh these are some of the installation shots and that meanwhile you know we we we try to facilitate these public programs and on youtube you will be able to see this three wonderful artists talking about how they create their work and then we're still finishing our terrace where we'll start uh we'll start installing next months that's punery sempitex brass tupa and then also highway waves fountain of light alabacar luminous ground and then i do want to very quickly talk about the recent acquisitions um because again when the museum has uh is in its mission um to also build a collection for contemporary art what kind of artwork do we want to collect so i hope these will show a kind of a direction that we're going after this is the self-portrait of uh the photographer um michael jang and um he's uh he's famous for his asian american series uh in the united seventies but then at the same time uh i also came across this particular work that is a self street that he took for himself in 1973 uh in san francisco and then barry mcgee uh in 2019 uh spray painted are you okay um are we okay and this is the work um that is in the recent acquisition of the asian art museum as well as a lady and the road map by bernie spain and we we acquired a total of eight artwork from bernice bean significant and important american artist of her time that is still not being recognized and it's important that the museum take a position and honor her work so that's bernice bing and this is another piece that is now in the hr museum's collection and with that i will conclude today's presentation and i hope it gives you a glimpse of what we've been doing in the past two years and time flies and we just reopened i hope you get opportunity to visit the museum and if not which is totally understandable given the current environment we're in we have a really wonderful online presence as well so check us out and sometimes this is another problem to have that when you have too many videos uh of uh the talk how do you navigate through them we don't know yet so but check us out great i just want to say hi also to christine elpash lots of familiar names uh thank you masha yes well hopefully they'll still stay here because we i want to ask you a bunch of questions and i would love to receive some questions from everybody here uh just to share with everyone the way that we do this for the q a is you'll see a camera that's right next to your name to the right of your name just click click on to that and or uh is the camera that's correct and then um you will be able to uh get into a queue for uh me to bring you up on screen to ask a question or you can you just use the chat and i will repeat that question um and then i'm hoping that abby will answer it uh chip if you can bring us both on screen oh my gosh abby that was fantastic it's so much of a range of work and the things that you said were so profound i could understand now why alpesh is so fond of you and how grateful we are to alpesh for having you with us today um i want to just share ask while we're waiting for some questions um and one of the reasons why i was really excited for you to be here is that chautauqua um now we're year-round especially the chautauqua visual arts is year-round especially with this lecture series and uh also we're expanding our residency program etc um and renting out faculties uh studios etc anyway uh but in the summer the main chautauqua season is for nine weeks and the first week which is june 26 to july 3rd is in the topic of that week is china and the world collaboration competition or confrontation really examining you know the relationship between the united states and china and other countries relationships with china and so i wanted to ask you something that we had spoken about on the phone a little bit you know can you tell me too what do you think about uh well many aspects of the art world and the artist in china also uh their their struggles every artist has some set of struggles or the also the wonderful blooming of contemporary art in beijing and throughout asia um can you talk about those things and um what are you seeing just in general of the art world there and uh and also the relationship in the arts between the united states and china generally in the visual arts oh god uh these are here we go those are huge questions these are huge questions but you know about chinese contemporary art um you know i think art and freedom of speech always go hand in hand and um we're definitely seeing the environment is tightening up and it's getting more and more difficult uh for our artists to feel free um to to create work and not just that i mean free you know free from what right free from the the ideological control um the um the the silencing of journalism and also but at the same time free from capitalism i mean one of the things about the chinese contemporary art that has been getting so much attention um it ha you know the capital has a lot to deal with it so there's the art and there's the art market and and i have to say a lot of times you know the kind of art that you know we hope to see um are not necessarily what the market is in favor of and and also what the market is in favor of are you know a lot of times you know i don't even know if i should call them art anymore and so that's one thing but then also you know the the kind of work that is coming you know um out of say beijing um and you know it's i think it's very very complicated uh in the 80s what we're seeing is really the country started to opening up and the end of cultural revolution and people got that sense of freedom and that sense of freedom created some of the most phenomenal contemporary art out of china wow but then as 1989 came um and you know when when the government started to get tanks to kill people to kill its civilians it's it's not the immediate effect but gradually you see the killing of the art and how you know people were responding to it and you know it's a slow process but we're really seeing you know um the the environment has been suffocating but and also that is from this very i would say mainland-centric sort of idea on what chinese contemporary art is and what about those on the periphery right if you are not in this major cities how will your artwork know and a little bit like our east coast and west coast thing i mean west coast artists i always feel like so under recognized um and so so are the um uh the the the the artist of color the the minority colors in this country and so when and this is why it's important for us to look at the artist from taiwan from hong kong um and also you know um the um that is not part of that mainland greater china narrative um so i think uh so that is one layer of the many many facets of that question and then because you know what we're all seeing um how you know the sunflower movement in taiwan that was taking place as well as the umbrella movement and and the recent two years the devastating uh development in hong kong and i'm seeing great artworks are being created out of these two regions and so after hope were able to feature the work from the taiwan artists or artists based in taiwan as well as the artists who are active in hong kong as well as the um diaspora community um that has a home base uh in these places so does that answer anything oh my gosh it's amazing um we're really excited about that week and and um it'll be very interesting to see uh to see what comes out of it because i think what one of the aspects of chautauqua is uh thought leadership and exchange and to talk about also uh you know art obviously is is um uh not only symbolic but it's it's the practice of freedom of speech so um yeah it's i think a lot of people in this country take that for granted especially artists and speaking of which so dr patel alpesh patel who is the author of productive failure which is right here next to me behind me um he's asked a question he says i've always found fascinating how you abby work with artists can you talk a bit about your approach to working with contemporary artists and i would just want to add on to that how do you find them there's a lot of artists how do you choose them how do you work with them um you know i don't have any kind of like uh one size fits all approach but uh i'll just take you know for example christine um i i always like her work i just you know uh you know we just never had the chance to work together and so when she was uh working on her project for you know place of belonging i and you know i'm naturally curious about what that project is about and so uh and then so when we talked about it and then she said that you know i would like to you know you know get in touch with the community and then i immediately thought about the refugee you know from china the political refugee from china and then so i invited you know christine um to east bay where many of them live and so um they came you know a lot of times um for for lots of new immigrants because of the language barrier they are often not included in the you know cultural activities that we have in this country so um so it's very difficult for them to kind of be part of this larger what's so-called you know our activity or public life um what have you um they're trying to survive and they're trying just to make ends meet so we're very lucky that we got hold of them and they're able to come out and and to participate in the workshop and it was through those facilitation i got to learn christine's practice more and that's very similar like how i work with other artists is to working them working with them in the process when they create the work so a lot of times when um i work with the artist i'm not working with the end product of what they have created uh most likely um i or the institution i'm with are very much of that creative process not to intervene but to support because i feel like that is the best way to first get to know the artist but then also have a very vested interest in what they are going to create so um i think those kind of approach it also allow we got to know each other i mean just like you share and you know in order to do this talk we have um a lot of kind of conversations beforehand just to get to know each other um even that you know it will be me doing a presentation but it was through those kind of very uh detailed uh process and putting things together you started to get an idea on how we figure each other out you know how we figure out to make this project happen and working online making it a lot more difficult i have to say you can still do it but art is something very hands-on you know it's really it's about embedding the practice itself so um so i think that approach is very important to me uh that's how i uh develop relationship with artists um and also work with artists and try well i think first and foremost i'm an audience and as an audience um i need to really understand them um and then that i will learn to figure out okay what is the way to present the work and i still you know i struggle with that because a lot of times what the artist is about is so much more than the final thing or or the work in progress that we're seeing there's so much more than that so i think um and then how do you um as an institution present the work more than just that outcome is is very very challenging um so i i'm still trying to figure that out i always admire other curators how that they would do so much better or they figure that out they look so much more sophisticated and then and and and um and and i'm not being honest it's true that i try to figure out how i don't know what you're there for i i would just say from from the the uh the things that you were saying about the contemporary role of the museum you're it seems like you're leading the way so i think you're an amazing example and in fact christine says abby's role was instrumental to the success of the process exclamation point she supported the project with cccsf staff help from outreach access to this community trust and community building coordination language interpretation advice and consulting so thank you for all that great work that's extraordinary um and thanks for sharing that i have another question well yeah thank you christine that's amazing i'm happy you're here um uh another question from judy berry who is our um chautauqua visual arts gallery's director and she asked how do you see contemporary arts artists work change and shift change backslash shift from artwork they've created in china versus the work they make while residing in other countries even in the united states so you were talking about um oppression really and so uh in china and um a limitation of freedom of speech how do you think that changes their work uh i would imagine a lot could probably change it certainly made things a lot more difficult uh in china but then on the on the other hand we're really seeing some amazing work come out of china that is not part of the market system that is now part of the institutional system and they just they they took it they took it to these kind of raw streets um without institutional support and like a guerrilla uh kind of movement and they work with underground ngos they work with volunteer groups they work with um community who got evicted um and then you really see some you know while that is this really terrible suppression happening but then at the same time you are amazed at how uh the the ability to to imagine um you know a new creative outlet um it's it's quite i mean it's fascinating to to watch how that they could compete with the control um and um so some of those um i have been very impressed by and continue to follow um and and clearly they are they are creating new territories and you know cultivating new places um i'm getting into uh these areas that that they could they could escape uh the sort of like surveillance or what have you so that's one part of it but then the other part is about how the artwork will shift once that you becoming an immigrant because i think there's a difference between surgery and and reciting because when you're sir journaling you you know you you'll probably have this idea that you're going to go back soon and it's a hideout um you're just you're trying to just be in a you know probably safer place or or whatever the reason that could be but when you're really starting to living here um and and take myself as an example it wasn't until i came to united states i started to look at myself and re-examine myself through this very different lens like being an alien what it means to be an immigrant what it means to be a woman a woman immigrant in this country and um it was that lens prompted me to to shift to art and i wasn't even an artist or doing anything in arts before but then because this experience i i make that shift and so if you you are an artist you can imagine those kind of um those kind of identity crisis or i you know just questions on identity uh and what you know the the familiar and the estrangement how that will make you and how that you're trying to make connections uh as an alien to your homeland but then as a also an alien to this current new place that you're you know that is harboring you so and that change will not happen immediately a lot of times it's you know it's becoming like it's no it's a process of becoming like after 10 years or 20 years you started to see the shift so it doesn't happen immediately um and so it's good to always get to know about their practice before and their practice later so for example jeong chong bin is a very good example that he was a portraiture painter at the beginning and then he become abstract and you if you see his early work is very masculine uh and very aggressive but then later on you know after almost 20 years um you know it's almost like that ego was gone and um the artist become absent and you know what you see is the influence you know of the nature you know of his um search for um his own existence uh in this part of the world and also how you know the life in california has transformed him so you see that in his practice you'll see that in his artwork so great thank you for that you know it's interesting when you mentioned um your life before art and i i just looked on your linkedin page actually and and something that stuck out to me was in 1998 to 2002 you were an analyst at silicon silicon um valley bank and then after that after that um you started your co-founder of the chinese art network so how did that happen in between that like what i know you said you found art but somebody just doesn't whip up and find and and and uh create a non-profit organization um so i just you do it's you do you want to do that though hard to do that but tell me how how that happened for you during those times because that that's quite a contrast of different worlds because i didn't have a choice because there was no institution facilitating a contemporary photography photography or image making for chinese immigrants that are not doing traditional art so there's no such place there's no such organization so you have to create something on your own because you have no choice so you have to move out of that space so it's not like yeah so um i remember at the time you know we're all like immigrant photographers and then we try to do you know we try to just show the work or anything and a lot of people say we never heard of such group and uh even i remember i went to my old organization chinese culture center and we don't fit into what they did then uh we're not traditional enough our thing doesn't necessarily have any meaning and and looking back you know even nowadays now that i'm in institution i might not know how to treat that work either um it just so you have to create something on your own and then um you you try to survive and uh but then uh i just uh i just got very very lucky that um people were very willing to help me um so they they're willing to give me opportunities and then at this time i think many of um of us that in the field probably were feeling that there was something that were missing and we all need something and then we just you know we're just kind of at the same time joined together there are people in the museum world or in the cultural field that were looking for these kind of expressions and we we kind of fit into that um and because we created it so and i i think that also you know go back to el paso like how i you know the process working with contemporary artists is a lot of times i um i see something and i feel like those are the kind of work that we have not seen before or we have seen before but it was in a different context and we probably don't have it for our community or the kind of cultural background that we have and so that part is important and and this also brings to bring up another point is the the kind of work with women artists and a lot of times i have to emphasize that that these artwork got presented or or highlighted not because they're women but because the work is important and the work is missing from the big picture and so we we saw this work and they're important and they feel they fill a void and um and so i you know i always view it that way um instead of like that it's oh it's about you know just about gender or something but it's not and even you know like right now in uh asian art museum all the work that i just mentioned this kind of practice this kind of um platform we don't have it in the country and uh these are the kind of voices that i you know i'm just attracted to and um and when you realize that it doesn't get facilitated that could be discouraging but then that should also become a motivating factor that that you shouldn't and then i remember one of the reporters when uh when we were talking about you know chanel miller and um jennifer and uh jess there was one common maidens it's just like well you know these artists are not that famous and when they're not famous the artwork is hard to it's hard to circulate even if i write you know even if i would write about it and the article is not that easy to circulate but that shouldn't be the reason we don't do them you know you know that should be the reason that we do more and more people need to do it correct so yeah so so you know those are just very kind of um i would say it's driven a lot of them is driven by instinct um and i yeah i would say um we have so many artists doing important work but their work for whatever the reason are not being seen widely um and and even like this and i don't know why i i i immediately thought about this but i have to kind of comment on it is um you know in in this in this current moment when asian communities are experiencing this this really extreme you know hostile environment um of course you know when we look at asian art museum um we would like to know what the hr museum has been doing and if you see this kind of artwork it's not that it just happened it happened such a long time ago and it repeats um and then so a lot of these work addressed to this but it's probably not in a causality type of manner but it's connected and i think that we need to do this work but we need to respond to the moment but at the same time we can't just respond to the moment and and and therefore you know these artists that they have line up and they need more museum to step up to recognize them and they don't need to be the asian art museum to recognize them right and i think your your starting that uh organization is a great example for so many artists too to if it's not being done and the institution isn't isn't finding them or isn't well that doesn't really happen but isn't recognizing them at the moment um you start something for which you did now christine has a couple questions so the first one is just wondering if you had have thoughts about building cross racial solidarity in this moment and then the second question i'll i'll repeat after the answer of the first um i think her two questions are related um okay i would like to uh because her second question is she can imagine how to even begin to curate art and artists from such a huge huge region as asia and not to mention artists in the asian diaspora in latin america africa and caribbean where to begin and where to end um i get overwhelmed by the idea of that question too and um of course nobody have answers for that but i um i think that this should be the question that constantly on our minds as cultural workers because um and i would like to quote this one uh activist from hong kong who was also a writer and a philosopher a very young and at the time that he said for people to for hong kong people to connect to the world we connect through pain and i think that will be where to begin and um and then i kind of feel like that's in so many ways that's how christine's work struck the core with me you know the sense of belonging is you know it's also kind of talking about the sense that you don't belong and that's where you kind of start because that there are so many places that make you feel that you don't belong so you need to think about okay so where do i really belong to and that sense of belonging and and that come from the idea of pain and then i remember also talking about this idea because after hope right you're talk you're trying to talk about hope in the current dna you know you know yeah and and especially talking to people who are in miramar in philippines and in in hong kong and um i remember um the artist london pong at one of the close sections mentioned that hope comes from being hopeless yeah and and so that was um yeah i would say i that's where we begin we begin with was was sharing our pain at a museum as a space i i think should be a place that should have this ability to talk about pain where i think a lot of museums don't and so we need to think about that and um and and then hopefully uh we don't need to feel so hopeless and and we from what the artist has created uh we try to find a sense of hope you know i don't know christine you ask very difficult questions uh well thank you christine we have another question from julia quan julia is one of our alumni from 2020 from the school of art residency program she's a fantastic artist um and really wonderful person um she she writes here in the chat hi abby thank you for discussing the importance of doing the work to better serve communities i know that quote community engagement unquote and quote dialogue unquote are often championed by many artists and art institutions i was wondering how you decide quote engagement successful and in what areas do you find room for improvement and um she put in parentheses you alluded to certain projects that you continue to think about afterwards during your talk yes and i think the tricky word is what is being successful and i think as institutions we got so many measurements in place kpi you know roi uh those kind of terms um um and of course you know a lot of you know institutions and foundations starting to realize that you know they cannot they could be one of the measures they cannot be the only measure um you know i i honestly don't know what constitutes a successful community engagement um i think of a a first start from the positioning of such engagement and and what is the intent of this kind of engagement if this engagement is about numbers is this the engagement about you know um evaluating diversity and what you do need to measure them but on the other hand you know also trying to measure the unmeasurable is is is kind of counterproductive at the same time and so i you know i don't have a great answer for that but i will always start with what the intention is what the intention of that community engagement does that mean you know for example sometimes we have this internal discussion you know on social media and on the events right what kind of events that is constitute you know what what kind of events will be considered as successful we have a lot of people of course that's great but does that mean that having a lot of people then is a great then it's a great success then if that is the goal then you have to create the kind of program or events that has this mass appeal then when you have that as the intent very often it change the nature of what you try to engage and that's a lot of times i feel it that way and the same thing with the social media if you want to have a lot of people to like it if you want to have a lot of people to retweet it or something and i would say a piece of artwork can never compete or not never maybe sometimes but most most likely cannot compete with a panda being very cute or a celebrity gossip or something then you know then we really need to see what is behind those numbers and i get pressure for that too uh and it's not that i don't care for those numbers but a lot of times i become very suspicious um of how we measure them and the outcome for that so i i'm not sure if i answered julia's question but um but i i think the ability to engage is actually not easy for example when christine was doing her workshop you know this idea of just having the access to engage um we kind of did it in a you know expedite way because i'm sort of the middle person uh but that's also because i know christine's work uh back in the days so there is this already building trust with that kind of community engagement but um i you know i i will be very careful if it's a completely new artist and it's not from the bay area before and and what their intentions are um you know because the rules of the engagement is also important so the community engagement started with the rules of engagement and the intention of the engagement that need to be constantly facilitated and negotiated for me the success lies in that part way more than what the outcome is yeah i was not i was i was going like this because the larger numbers i mean sometimes that can that to me to be very shallow because in a sense that kind of success quote-unquote means that they're reaching a larger audience but maybe not necessarily reaching them you know that that maybe the intimacy is is the answer um but i love your aunt your your uh answer to that and julia says thank you so much for sharing all of your concerns and the complexities of putting together any project i can't agree more yeah i think engagement is actually very very hard and and very often i think um uh cultural institutions and this is this is a tricky part because again you know um cultural institute and we have this internal discussion as well cultural institutions are not necessarily good at that and the so-called community engagement and we need new imagination for that because this very often the so-called community engagement is put on the side and it's being considered as part of the public program or a eventful thing but i think you know but i think you know community engagement is very very long term and um it's not one event and of course you can start with events and then you'll do a lot of events but um but to make them eventful um we just need to be very careful about those kind of things and and um i just think that a lot of times community engagement is more even based but i i don't think it it's only even based and i think it's actually very very hard to do so yeah well um anybody i'm gonna wait for a last question and i'll ask you a question while i'm waiting from the audience for any further questions um uh i've done a a couple book tours across the country and uh i'll never forget going to spaces which is a non-profit organization in cleveland um and we had a a big town hall forum there and someone in the audience when when i asked um we we always warmed up with a panel in the audience i would ask uh would two artists need and want and someone stood up and said i i don't want to go to a museum i want the museum to come to me now i think that's a huge issue and i do think that museums have stayed way too exclusive for way too long and now they're caught in this place where they have to get out there you're talking about engagement these kind of public programs that are looked upon as well you have to go to the museum for that now you're doing things that are very different and kudos to your colleagues and also to the museum for creating that department and bringing you on um to make those changes but what are you all doing to go out into the communities very hard well i think that has to be first don't you think i mean something has to happen there um i mean i wish is a lot easier um and i think you know the current moment um we're forcing museum to think otherwise but instead of the museum going to the audience per se i think i mean thanks to the kind of time we're in and i always say this is um you know the past five years has not it has been has been very bad yes simply but i also have to say that um it also forces uh institutions to really take another look at themselves and um and i also feel like the um artists of color their work have never been this visible and um and of course that's not enough and we need to keep the momentum um and i think um institutions really um need to respond to this whole climate and question you know its own sort of practice how they do things um the diversity of the staff the diversity of the artists that they they present and um and their relationship with the public life why do museums exist you know why are we relevant and how are we connected to public life correct and um and i think it's it's very difficult bringing the museum to people um if we're saying that you know just through the internet and um and even just say you know just thinking completely outside of the box i bring you that object into your home but what else am i bringing to you i might bring you a very colonial teaching you know you know a misogyny kind of attitude you know all kinds of these kind of things are embedded in so many practices um you know within the institution and if that doesn't get taken care of and it's better that they stay where they are and uh you know not to even further spreading the harm but i'm being a little mean but you know i know you're not um you know that's just um and you know the the question about why you know why we're relevant why we should be there and then um and then how you not only engage i mean say the the mass the the local you know different neighborhood and or whatever the the the community you know whether that there's a very specific kind of constituency um that that you have in mind um at the same time the the donor community you know find new donors that are willing to support this kind of work is very important i think um to think about how that we can make museum more accessible but you know again making museum more accessible is one thing but what kind of the ideas that we wanted to make more accessible right right digging deeper well thank you for digging deep with us this evening i mean how amazing i cannot thank you enough you're truly inspiration and thought leader for all of us and moving moving things forward i'm thrilled that chautauqua visual arts and the asia art museum will be collaborating and i look forward to that and then i also i just have to say thank you again to alpesh patel for connecting us and for all the work he does as we were talking about with uh thinking about art history differently and i'm really really thrilled to read your essay in his new book that will be coming out so thank you very much thank you thank you and um for chip i would love for chip to bring up who the next person's coming i wonder if you know um uh if you know who ye she is krakauer she's actually the executive director of the queen's council for the arts um and she is also a children's book author and she works with a lot of immigrants in queens uh new york and she's going to really talk about that so i think that is going to be a really interesting conversation she works with all different uh all different uh of different forms of the arts not just the visual arts so um she'll be with us next week and i'm so thrilled that you were here with us as a part of this um lecture series i can't thank you enough and i can't thank everyone too for being part of our open port open porch i always say that it i mean it's terrible our our porch um do we have that the virtual porch you know what we're all virtual now it's like i wish we were open actually that's what's in my mind like i wish we were open that we can all exchange with one on one another hopefully by the time that this comes out and recording we will be able to hug one another

Channel: Chautauqua Institution

Views: 278

Keywords: Chautauqua Institution, CHQ

Id: 7HnF00woxu4

Length: 100min 30sec (6030 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021