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.
Laura Kina is an artist and a Vincent de Paul Professor of Art, Media, and Design at DePaul University. She is the coeditor of War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art. Jan Christian Bernabe is the operations, new media, and curatorial director at the Center for Art and Thought. The contributors are Mariam B. Lam, Eun Jung Park, Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Valerie Soe, and Harrod J Suarez. Featured artists are Anida Yoeu Ali, Kim Anno, Eliza Barrios, Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Wafaa Bilal, Hasan Elahi, Greyson Hong, Kiam Marcelo Junio, Lin + Lam (H. Lan Thao Lam and Lana Lin), Viet Le, Maya Mackrandilal, Zave Martohardjono, Jeffrey Augustine Songco, Tina Takemoto, Kenneth Tam, and Saya Woolfalk.
Foreword by Susette Min Introduction: For the Love of Unicorns: Queering Contemporary Asian American Art by Jan Christian Bernabe and Laura Kina CHAPTER 1 QUEERING SURVEILLANCE "You Blushed": Queering Surveillance after 9/11 in the Work of Jill Magid and Hasan Elahi by Harrod J. Suarez Performance, Surveillance, and Sousveillance: A Conversation with Wafaa Bilal and Hasan Elahi by Jan Christian Bernabe and Laura Kina CHAPTER 2 QUEERING TIME Pacific Standard Time: Queering Temporality in Asian American Visual Cultures by Mariam B. Lam Promiscuous Time Traveling (on Leaving and Returns): A Conversation with Lin + Lam and Vi?t Le by Laura Kina CHAPTER 3 QUEERING AFFECT Filipino Diasporic Queer Killjoy: Recuperating Failure in Jeffrey Augustine Songco's Guilty Party and BOMH Series by Jan Christian Bernabe Negotiating Desire and (Queer) Masculinity: An Interview with Kenneth Tam by Jan Christian Bernabe CHAPTER 4 QUEERING METHODOLOGY Queer Zen: Unyoking Genealogy in Asian American Art History by Alpesh Kantilal Patel Pin@y Projections: Urban Spaces, Digital Ephemerality, and Planned Obsolescence: An Interview with Eliza Barrios by Jan Christian Bernabe Queer Traveler-on Desiring and Failing Sublime Landscapes: An Interview with Kim Anno by Jan Christian Bernabe and Laura Kina CHAPTER 5 QUEERING SUBJECTIVITY Risky Subjectivity: Select Works by Korean Adoptee Artists by Eun Jung Park Dazzle: A Conversation on Transgender Subjectivity with Greyson Hong and Kiam Marcelo Junio by Jan Christian Bernabe and Laura Kina CHAPTER 6 QUEERING MIXED RACE Liminal Possibilities: Queering Mixed-Race Asian American Strategies in the Art of Maya Mackrandilal and Zave Gayatri Martohardjono by Laura Kina Chimera: A Conversation on Mixed Race/Mixed Methods with Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik and Saya Woolfalk by Laura Kina CHAPTER 7 QUEERING ASIAN AMERICA Open-Source Identities: Identity and Resistance in the Work of Three Asian American Artists by Valerie Soe Muscles, Mash-Ups and Warning Shots-Queering Japanese American History: An Interview with Tina Takemoto by Jan Christian Bernabe and Laura Kina The Buddhist Bug-Spanning Borders and Bodies: An Interview with Anida Yoeu Ali by Laura Kina Afterword: To be Queer Being to Queer It . . . by Kyoo Lee
The editors disrupt notions of race, gender, and art to question the limits of each of these categories. A thoughtful and challenging collection that makes an important contribution to the fields of Asian American studies and visual culture. -- LeiLani Nishime, author of Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture Queering Contemporary Asian American Art provides a vital intervention and gendered counterpoint to the ways in which Asian Americans are usually racialized, demonized, and betrayed by mainstream academia and media. -- Russell Leong, editor of Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts This volume stands as a bracing and provocative testament to the expansive critical and expressive possibilities of fluid concepts like 'queering' in dismantling, recasting, and realigning extant representations of Asian American identities, subjectivities, and positions in the twenty-first century world. -- Margo Machida, author of Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary Queer is a piquant term: as noun adjective, and verb, it is put to good use in this thoughtful collection of essays and interviews. The contributors variably attend to the marked body, challenging assumptions about it, including its readability. These writings demonstrate the ways that bold, contemporary artists are moving beyond rigid binaries and cynical, multi-culturalist systems. Their invitation to critically engage differences and norms is most welcome. -- Jacqueline Francis, author of Making Race: Modernism and "Racial Art" in America
