Come Together: Arts in the Asian American Movement with Corky Lee, Tomie Arai, Jack Tchen, and Karen Tei Yamashita

Arts in the Yellow Power Moment!
Saturday, June 19, 2010, 2-4PM

Come hear one of the foremost Asian American novelists of her generation and the artist-activists who defined what it means for all of us to be Asian American. This special symposium features key activists Corky Lee, Tomie Arai, and Jack Tchen alongside Karen Tei Yamashita, whose new novel, I-Hotel, is destined to be a future classic of Asian American literature.

(Profile of Tomie Arai & Corky)

Tomie Arai is an activist, artist, philosopher, poet, historian, printmaker, instillation artist, and public artist who has worked collaboratively with community groups for over thirty years. She has realized numerous commissions, including ones from the Cambridge Arts Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Printmaking, a 1995 Joan Mitchell Visual Arts Grant, a 1997 Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Visual Artist Residency, and a 1994 NEA Visual Arts Fellowship. Arai's work explores the relationship of art to history and the role that memory plays in retelling a collective past. Some of her recent works include a series of constructions that incorporate silk-screened photographs addressing issues of identity, displacement, and acculturation. She is married to Legan Wong, has two children and is a grandmother.

Corky Lee, known as the "undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate," is a self-taught photographer, has been documenting Asian and Pacific American community for over 30 years. His work, which has been described as "only a small attempt to rectify omissions in our history text books," has appeared in Time magazine, the New York Times, The Village Voice, Associated Press, The Villager and Downtown Express. In an interview in AsianWeek Lee commented: "I'd like to think that every time I take my camera out of my bag, it's like drawing a sword to combat indifference, injustice and discrimination, trying to get rid of stereotypes."


Event will be held at The Asian American Writers' Workshop, 110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor, Between 6th and 7th Avenues, New York, NY. Free and open to the public.