Next Generation curated by Yuna Baek is a group exhibition featuring works by artists exploring the future of Asian American art in a digital age of flexible and hybrid cultural identity asking, “What is the face of the next generation of Asian American artists? It might as well be an avatar, as the globalizing force of the Internet continues to build a cultural landscape that transcends location, ethnicity, gender, and language. The next generation of artists can log into any culture with a click of a mouse, and their personal identities (be it singular or multiple) are shaped by the limitless possibilities of the web. They build bridges between different cultures and communities, creating flexible and hybrid identities that define the Next Generation. “
Featuring Kalani Largusa, Wang Frank Yefeng, Eunie Kim, Cathy Kim, Snow Yunxue Fu, Hiba Ali, Kiam Marcelo Junio, Sua Yoo, Heelim Hwang, Arjuna Capulong, and Greyson Hong.
If you’re in the Chicago area, come by the opening reception this Friday!
Final critique of my #artschool BFA experience: “Asian Eyes” Installation view. 6 panels of screenprinted chiffon and organza in varying skin tones. #kiammarcelojunio #art #work #werq #modelminority #SAIC #chicago #asian #eyes #ethnography #racism #critique (at Sharp Building)
Dye, iridescent tint, and discharge media on Oriental silk brocade. #modelminority #workinprogress #art #fibers #screenprinting #asian
New work, silkscreen on satin. #modelminority #art #orientalism #racism #satire #asian #screenprinting #glitch #gender #queer #workinprogress #jerryblossom
It feels extremely taxing to constantly create work about the “self” - in image, in politics, in gender, race, and history. We are all complete beings with our own narratives with varying amounts of intersecting oppressions and privileges. I don’t ever want to be perceived as saying that my story is any more worthy or interesting than anyone else’s. But with the fact of my practice, as a performative artist, these issues are always brought to the forefront. As a performer, I am always subjecting my self to fetishization, and therefore, also everything my body and history symbolizes.
I want to take a bit of a break and just make pretty things that people enjoy. And get back into my personal yoga practice, because I think I really need that right now.
I could use a good hug too.
LEX·IC·A - Jerry Blossom & Mister Junior - January 2013
Jerry Blossom & Mister Junior
Kiam Marcelo Junio a.k.a. Jerry Blossom is a familiar face to Salonathon. I first encountered Kiam via a submission to Chicago IRL and soon after experienced a plethora of inventive and vividly sharp performances discussing their Philippine heritage, naval career through the shifting lens of gender and class. Kiam continues debuting new works and series with exponential fervor. Kiam was also just awarded Chance Dances Critical Fierceness Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant. Find out more about Kiam during my recent interview with them: soundcloud.com/joevarisco/kiam-marcelo-junio-interview-a
Mister Junior is one of those forces of life that passes through a social climate and leaves it altered and renewed. Their spirit of collaboration and engagement is in a constant state of forward movement. Recently Mister Junior began an expanded tour around the country jumping in and out of Chicago in time to audition for America’s Got Talent. Details of airdate on their site soon.
LEX·IC·A is a celebration of the ways in which we communicate with one another and the knowledge we share in this process. It seeks to explore the myriad of complex and beautiful ways we share, play, love, suffer and honor one another through performance work and strive to cultivate community. LEX·IC·A is an inclusive event for anyone interested in procuring dialogue and discourse through performance. Take risks, challenge norms, resist and thrive!
It’s on Facebook, so it’s official now.
The Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant Winner:
Kiam Marcelo Junio is a multidisciplinary artist living in Chicago, IL. He works in multiple media including photography, video, printmaking, installation, burlesque, and performance art. His research and art work centers around queer identities, the Filipino American diaspora, and post-colonialist Asian American tropes and stereotypes, and military and civilian power dynamics.
Jerry Blossom is Kiam’s alter-ego, a genderqueer Filipino male bodied femme-presenting persona, obsessed with assimilating into Western culture and beauty standards.
Kiam served seven years in the US Navy. He was born in the Philippines and has lived in the US, Japan, and Spain. He is also a registered Yoga teacher.
Congratulations also to the Critical Fierceness Grantees, Rami George and Betsy Odom!
Come join us this Saturday at Chances at the Hideout to celebrate!
The Hideout Inn, 1354 W. Wabansia, Chicago
**THIS SATURDAY NIGHT THE MARK AGUHAR MEMORIAL GRANT AND CRITICAL FIERCENESS GRANT WINNERS FOR WINTER 2012 WILL BE ANNOUNCED**
HOSTED BY VAJAQUEQUE BROWN
FEATURING DJS SWAGUERILLA AND LADY MISS NAVY PIER
5 DOLLARS
*DOORS FOR CHANCES AT MIDNIGHT*
http://chancesdances.tumblr.com/
More links:
www.iamKiam.com
OMG Jerry Blossom
On Diversity in Media Representations, the Chicago Queer Performance Scene, Tonight’s LEX-I-CA, and Why I Think We Do What We Do.
Did you know that Toni Braxton played Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast on Broadway in 1998? Why does this now seem like a strange and wonderful dream?
The diversity in the entertainment industry in the 1990’s was truly promising. I remember many TV shows about colored people, friends, and families - Living Single, Family Matters, Fresh Prince of Bell Air, In the House, Martin, House of Buggin’, Malcolm & Eddie, The Hughleys, All American Girl, The Single Guy, Sister Sister, Smart Guy, Moesha, the Parkers, and so many others, like that amazing multicultural Cinderella TV movie with Brandy, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, Bernadette Peters, and Paolo Montalban (a Filipino actor) as Prince Charming.
As a child of the 90’s, and coming right from the Philippines, it seemed to me that people of color were quickly breaking down barriers, that the stage was being set for people like me to dream big and achieve those dreams, to see ourselves in flashing lights, to experience that overdue equality. But something happened on the way to the 2010’s during which those barriers built right back up without our noticing. I think this happened around 9/11 and the terrorism hysteria, after which anything outside of the typical suburban, white nuclear family became threatening. This is the frame of mind that we have been in for the past decade, but I think and hope that things are finally beginning to change again.
In the queer Chicago scene, a lot of performers are young people of color (many of whom grew up in the 90’s watching these shows, listening to the music and absorbing a more diverse art and pop culture). A friend asked me recently why I think this is, and why now. I believe we’ve gotten tired of waiting for representation in mass media. The promise of the 90’s told us that we can be anything we want to be. When we stopped seeing, or fell short of seeing, our selves reflected on screen, we began to voice our dissatisfactions and take matters into our own hands. We are now in the process of creating our own micro-media, our own platforms.
Which is why social justice blogs are so important right now. This is a movement of people of various races, gender presentations, and identities, who are creating our own representation, because the larger society has failed on its promise. And this is also why, more than ever, is it important, not to police, but to see how we are being represented, and by whom. This is also why so much light is being shed on cultural appropriation. Why we are saying, STOP STEALING OUR CULTURE. We are taking back our stories, we want to tell it ourselves. We want our voice.
Tonight’s Salonathon presents: LEX-I-CA is a manifestation of this. Looking at the line-up of my fellow performers, I see the beautiful faces of the talented beings who are ready to speak, to sing, to dance, to tell it like it is. Who analyze how gendered and racialized bodies are gazed upon, and what fantasies of exotification and other-ness still apply and need deconstructing. We need this time. We need this space to speak. Despite the oppressions we’ve faced and continue to face, having a voice is very much worth celebrating.
See you all tonight.
XOXO
Kiam Marcelo Junio / Jerry Blossom
Why do people insist on holding chopsticks all the way at the tip like this? You have absolutely no control when it’s this close to the food, you may as well just use your fingers.
Chopsticks are thicker at the ends for a reason, that’s where the weight and control is, which is why I try to have as much distance between my fingers and the food - it’s so much easier.
(rebloggable by request)
Anon asked: How is being transgender different from being transethnic? I’m sorry, this may seem like a trolling question, but I genuinely want to know.
My reply:
I’m sad that this is confusing :(
Mostly ‘cause it means that the awful transethnic people have been doing too good of a job in appropriating the term and co-opting trans narratives.
First. Transethnic was (before this recent fad) used to describe the experiences of PoC who have been adopted by white families. It is theirword. Which should also make it very clear how and why it is massivelydifferent of an experience than being transgender.
Second. Now that the term is being appropriated by a group of white people who claim to be a different race, often using language that invokes and co-opts and abuses transgender narratives, this is likely where your confusion comes from.
Simply put: race and gender do not work in similar ways. At all. They serve different purposes.
White people invented race as a means to justify stealing and murdering and colonizing PoC.
Gender is something that exists in most cultures, as close to being a universal trait of human life.
When we say that gender is socially constructed and that race is socially constructed (which is were this false equivalency comes from in the first place) we are not talking about the same thing.
Race only — now and forever — serves white supremacy. Which is why it is sooo disgusting for white people to, after stealing and murdering us for so many years, try to colonize ‘Asian’ (like in that recent reblog ). When ‘Asian’ is something white people made up in the first place to deny our humanity and occupy our countries.
Gender doesn’t work like that.
It is also interesting, no? that only white people ever claim to be transethnic but gender has always been plural and of great diversity in many cultures?
Anyway. This is my vague and disorganized explanation for why they aren’t the same thing. And never will be.
This is the most succinct explanation I’ve read on the subject thus far. Thank you.
(Source: biyuti)
Happy Holigays from Kiam Marcelo Junio and Jerry Blossom!
With @glitterpuppies at Salonathon presents: LEX-I-CA (at Beauty Bar)
Aren’t we the fucking cutest? Seriously.
I debuted the first piece of my “Oriental Beauty” collection tonight. The line takes cues from Orientalist fashion, a way to re-appropriate Western fashions which appropriate from Eastern/Asian traditional clothing. A way to re-commodify, and thus, take ownership of the commodification of the Asian body by capitalistic Western practices.
Theory/Fashion/Critique/Fabulousness all rolled into one. You are welcome.
This is great. I’ve been collecting theses weird old paintings for a few years now. I love them. I don’t have this one though Miss Wong ‘The Chinese Girl’ (often popularly known as The Green Lady) is a 1950 painting by the Russian artist Vladimir Tretchikoff (1913-2006). I’ve managed to get two of his other paintings and I LOVE them! I have ‘Balinese Girl’ she’s beautiful but kinda damaged. But I’ve got ‘Lady from Orient’ its huge and I managed to get it for just £25 off some young kid in this junk shop. I remember carrying it home down the road like id just found the crown jewels! It’s ace. I fucking love a bargain. I’ve just realised how boring this post sounds… Quick dont leave, I’m getting my dick out!
I’m REALLY curious as to why you’re collecting Orientalist paintings that were made to and continue to perpetuate sexist and Western-centric views that commodify Asian women as objects, as sexual or sexualized playthings for white men, rather than people.
(Source: neuewave)
Most time I photograph people in their own environments because it is personal, familiar, and comfortable for them. For me as a photographer, the situation becomes rather peculiar, intimate, and doubtful. Once I achieve the trust of the model, I can feel their energy and their desire to be seen and be explored but at the same time still reserve some for themselves. It is in those Almost Naked moments that my subjects are the most exquisite, when things occur, and what generally is not displayed initially in public is exposed. - SHEN WEI in conversation withJOERG COLBERG
SHEN WEI is a Chinese photographer who explores the intimate life of his subject through portraiture, landscape and still life. By intertwining the three genresWEI produces a unique and sensitive perspective of his homeland.
Born and raised in Shanghai, SHEN WEI currently lives and works in New York City. His first monograph titled Chinese Sentiment has been released by Charles Lane Press in New York last year.
Save the date: his new solo exhibition will be on view at Light Work, an artist-run, non-profit photography and digital media center in Syracuse, NY from November 05 to December 14, 2012 (opening: Thursday, November 8, 5-7pm).
via We Find Wildness
