Showing posts with label Cultural Equity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cultural Equity. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Back When It Was Said To Me I Had No Right...


Recalling some exhibitions and memories:

I was born and raised in Newark NJ in the Black, Puerto Rican and downtown neighborhood, apart from the Chinatown that barely existed back then.  My family’s laundry was four blocks from the area where the riots of 1968 broke out. When Black students took over the law building on Rutgers local campus I was with them. When many years later my father mentioned that someone came by the laundry, said something was going to happen that evening, and he need only take a chair and sit outside in front of his plate glass façade, and nothing will happen to his store. Clearly this was a planned uprising, not a riot. When AAAC mounted the Ancestors exhibit an Asian American artist said to me I had no right to do such a show. I knew I had every right.  


Dr. Alan Crite created a body of work that recorded life in the South end of Boston. He started working as an artist for the US government through the WPA. For decades he worked with African American churches. He mentored and encouraged many African American artists.  Artists at Northeastern University would call him father. He took under his wing the artist Lotus Do and she is forever grateful for his mentorship.  As board member and chair of The Association of American Cultures (TAAC), I brought Alan Crite to their bi-annual national conference, to promote and generate the collection of papers and oral histories documenting the relations between African and Asian American individuals and communities. Unfortunately we never received the support of foundations to continue this.

 

 Ancestors: a Collaborative Project with Kenkeleba House

This public exhibition was designed to encourage the act of paying homage, not only to one’s own ancestors but those of our neighbors, the ancestors of another people. It paid tribute to all America’s forebears, whether they be Asian, African, European, Latin American, or Native American.   By focusing on two, Asian and African American ancestors, it recognized that the rites and beliefs of diverse people permeate society as a whole and that acts of homage are fundamental to the development of the sense of community.  

“…we recognize the wealth of our heritage as Americans and encourage the act of paying homage

 to all the Ancestors of this Land”

Organized by Corrine Jennings & Robert Lee

Mounted at Kenkeleba House 214 East 2ed Street & at Asian American Arts Centre 26 Bowery

Artists Participating: 24, including several Afro-Asian artists and five Afro-Asian Collaborating artists.

Exhibition Flyer for “Ancestors,” Asian American Arts Centre, 1995.

 

Participating artists in Ancestors:

Camille Billops                                               Lotus Do Brooks  

Roy Hiro Calloway                                         Albert V. Chong      

Simone Leigh                                                  Richard Mafong

Sana Musasama                                              Helen Oji

Howardena Pindell                                         Yoland Skeete

Thomas Vu Daniel                                          Anton Wong

Elaine Wong                                                   Lily Yeh

Lui Lan Ding / Robert Craddock                    Eunju Kang  / Charles Burwell                        

David Higginbotham / Toshinori Kuga          Hyon Joo Kim / Prestone Jackson

Lisa K. Yi  / Faith Ringgold 

 

Simone Leigh

Untitled. Salt fired stoneware, 2006. Approximately 25 inches high.

 

                                             *                                     *                                      *


 In 1987, several African American artists participated in the four-part Mind’s I exhibition.  Robert Colescott, Alison Saar, Benny Andrews and Albert Chong, an Afro-Asian artist, participated with several other diverse artists. The accompanying essay noted: that the African American novelist Richard Wright, wrote of psychological siege as a normal state for persons of color.  

 

Albert Chong

Aunt Winnie's Story      30x20 inches    1995   thermal transfer print on canvas with incised copper metal 

 

                                                     *                                         *                                     * 


 In “Betrayal/Empowerment I” held at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1994 its written, “one of the stories of Asians in America is a story of betrayal.  Carlos Bulosan, a renowned Filipino novelist wrote as early as 1938 of the condition of the pinoy (Filipino) as one of betrayal. “  This is suggestive of a kinship between an African and Asian American sensibility.

  

 

Joseph Goto                                        Untitled #21 ,                   1979   welded steel 

 Sui Kang Zhao                        Fluorescent Pamphlet 1992   Fluorescent light, pamphlet, transparencies

 

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 In “We Count! The State of Asian Pacific America” in 1993, held in the Court House, adjacent to City Hall the catalogue essay “Towards an American Covenant With Difference” stated: …a national program should be implemented to promote a cultural/artistic dialogue, such that the gaps in understanding and communication between diverse peoples and traditions that has existed for so long are overcome. Such a program would prioritize diverse organizations and artists.  It would be based upon major initiatives to reverse the racial precepts and exclusionary policies of preceding decades. It would recognize an American covenant with difference is an important precondition for participation in an interdependent world.”    http://artasiamerica.org/artist/detail/71

 


Dolly Unithan

Banners of Martyrs (Victims of Police Violence)         348x40 inches       1993      site-specific installation

  

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 The theme of ancestors continued with The Reintegration of Tradition into Contemporary Art in 1999 where it points to, “…what cultures share in their spirituality without raising their separate characteristics.  The three sectors that describe American life (the marketplace, deliberative processes of democracy, and the civic sector) may have omitted their dependence on the fourth.  Their roles in the public arena cannot do their work without a mindfulness of the ‘larger silence’, and the great diversity of beliefs this republic has yet to encompass.”  A material and secular society tends to overlook the higher realm where spirituality and its silence tends to be drowned out by the noise and commotion of the chaos endemic to modern political processes. 

 

Hisako Hibi

Topaz         16x20 inches         1945      oil on canvas       Created in Topaz, UT

  

                                                   *                                     *                                     *

 

 In 2007 the exhibition Mixed Skin was held with Kip Fulbeck, Dorothy Imaguire & Toni Thomas and essays by Teresa Kim & Albert Chong, artists of mixed Asian descent & mixed African roots made manifest proudly this question of mixed identity.  To celebrate the identity of Hapa as a heart centered relationship, a basis for family, and for society’s diversity, was something AAAC could do.

 


Dorothy Imaguire  

Hapa, Sansei Project, 1992, Pastiche Kimonos, Mixed 3rd generation Japanese American project creating kimono garments from fabrics representing an individual’s ethnic heritage.

 

 

                                *                             *                              *      

 

 Yes, we were celebrating Asian and African relations and cultural ties. We were recognizing a similarity in the mental impact of oppression both faced.  We acknowledged the issue of skin and the hurdles it placed before us. We stated policies back in 1993 government policy makers should commit to. Maybe now is the time to revive the memory of those actions, to realize actions and decisions that could indeed move toward the kind of changes that are potentially viable today.  

 

Many mistakes were made, particularly in underestimating how a material and secular society tends to close itself from the higher realms where spirituality resides, and its silences tend to be drowned out by the noise of a competitive democracy. In a fringe organization like AAAC we could take advantage of being an outsider, saying things no one else was saying, pointing to cultural relationships that were being ignored, but that did not move our actions to be adopted.  We could only raise for viewers these ideas expressing our concerns. What audiences want and what the situation calls for is quite different today.

 

            *                      *                      *                      *                      *

 

As a senior community arts organization we thank you and are grateful for your support. We encourage you not to forget such elder organizations.  Even in the midst of all that we are going through, we are going through this together, so please keep us in mind.  Your support  and your donations are very much welcomed and needed.  Your skills and your time may be of great value to us.  Please do not hesitate to contact us. In this regard we invite you to donate to Asian American Arts Centre (see artspiral.org for donation link) or to one of the three elder arts organizations of your choosing below.

These are dear friends that you may already know.  Otherwise we invite you to get to know them. 

Towards intergenerational and intercultural elan: 


DONATE

 

Kenkeleba House

214 East 2nd Street, New York, NY 10009    (mail check to this address)

www.kenkeleba.org       

Corrine Jennings

 

Great Leap

Suite 300 1730 W. Olympic Blvd      Los Angeles, CA 90015 

http://www.greatleap.org/   (see link at end of website to donate)

Nobuko Miyamoto

 

Brandywine Workshop and Archives

730 South Broad Street  Philadelphia, PA, 19146

 https://brandywineworkshopandarchives.org/  (see website to donate)

Allan Edmunds

 

 

With Kind Regards, 

Bob Lee

 

Artspiral.org                            Artasiamerica.org                

 


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Thursday, September 21, 2017
AAAC Testimony on the Cultural Plan for NYC

AAAC Testimony at a City Hall Hearing on the completed Cultural Plan for NYC    
Sept 20, 2017

Int. No. 419 stated in 2014 in its opening statement,  “It is important to understand the scope of cultural services throughout the City, where these services are lacking and how cultural service gaps may be filled.” Many sought to seize the opportunity afforded by this visionary effort to address the problem of cultural equity in NYC. After decades of a history of benign neglect, racism, and discrimination suffered by the POC artistic and cultural community, a resolution to this problem was sought through listening to the needs and concerns of all those affected. Even the CIG started to worry publicly their funds might be shifted to POC orgs, reversing 40yrs of documented inequity. With the completion of CreateNYC that promise has now died.
Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl testifies at the Hearing. City Councilman Peter Koo are among those listening.

Asian American Arts Centre was one of those who saw in this an opportunity that had been impossible for forty years. After nearly two years of listening to New Yorkers and the publication of an extensive record of such interactions, the city has demonstrated it fails to listen where listening counts. AAAC and a thousand other arts organizations and the communities and boroughs they serve, our voices go unrecognized. Instead the lions share of funding to CIG has been re-inscribed, their funds assured, 67% of NYC as people of color their homes and their neighborhoods, are left to the real estate developers. Opportunity in America reigns - for developers, as the people get priced out of their homes and their neighborhoods.  

At the Cultural Equity Conference held in April of 2015 sponsored by the Cultural Equity Group of which I am a member, I stated the need to recognize the value of multiple cultures, especially traditional “wisdom bearers” who should be honored, and recognized, as well as the elder nonprofit cultural organizations many of these begun in the Civil Rights era whose community infrastructure has grown priceless in their value to the city of New York as a roadmap to cultural transition.

At a New York Community Trust gathering held at Museo del Barrio In November of last year I spoke again of these elder community organizations how their need for succession funding was crucial for their continued survival. City officials including Tom Finkelpearl were present at both these events.  The city listens, however it listens selectively. Now today three of these elder POC organizations are dying as our Mayor fiddles with the numbers of people of color on the staff of CIG institutions.

CityCouncilman VanBramer, sponsor of the Int. No. 419 and chair of the Cultural Committee listens to all who testify at the Hearing 

 Clearly this is just a ruse, the return of the New Audiences program of the 90s in another guise.  This was when the work of artists of color became so prominent, funding was given to established institutions to ‘grow their audiences’ instead of the POC organizations where these artists were developed.  Our Mayor cant seem to give resources to organizations where POC are on staff and also in control of their institutions.

Will the CreateNYC plan fill cultural service gaps, or offer even a few glimmers, in the next three to five and more years? Yes, however the challenge of a cultural plan for NYC, meaningful to race and cultural relations in NYC will have been lost. The question then becomes, how will 60-70% of NYC population deal with the continuing tradition of cultural neglect, denial, tokenism, misrepresentation, and suppression? 

Perhaps it should be no surprise that our Mayor, and all those to chose this time to address cultural equity, could not rewrite a cultural policy that has been in place for generations, consistent with domestic and international policies going back to before the ideas of Manifest Destiny if not to slavery itself.

Marta Vega (far left, of the Caribbean Cultural Center) testifies pointing out flaws in the language, definitions that affect the validity of the whole plan.
The record of the history of this nation, of the many streams that constitutes its mainstream, the entitlements it has endowed to itself, to empire, and to its dream machine, does help us to see the diverse forces fighting for its soul. Technology may open vistas to an incredible future, but our limits, the delusions within our ambitions, our human foibles, may give us pause before indulging in dreams that may be better left as dreams.

Waves of immigrants have dreamed bringing their energy to these shores. The price extracted, that their descendants pay is to leave behind who they were - a truncated memory. The price we may all pay for this is a society rooted in materialism, in dollars.  Seeing the CIG in this light, their role in maintaining  NYC and the USA as head and shoulders above all others, it is conceivable though not necessarily laudable why our Mayor has chosen to re-entrenched them.

He may claim New York as a sanctuary city, but there are limits to what our Mayor means by it. POC can take greater clarity as to the reality of our status, our difference, and those who dream can be forewarned - the social consequences generated, regardless the rewards it offers, how they may be used. 

In speaking with artists who live in countries where limits to artistic freedom is explicit, some council that their situation is not so bad, once as artists you accept your role, and that desperate times require desperate measures.

Thuan Uyen Le recently spoke in Brooklyn on the censorship artists have learned to live with in Vietnam.

This is about insight, the vision of the arts and artists – their gifts given to us. It is oddly from this room, this hall, that it is inappropriate to speak of art as art, to even see or recognize such a horizon exists. Arts voice is where the horizon speaks.  For those of us who are listening deeply, and there are many, this legislative process is quite antiquated.

The issue of a multicultural America under whatever revised terms it becomes known by, will remain a question beyond my generation and perhaps for many generations. It is likely to become increasingly central to what shapes this country and the people who reside in it.


Robert Lee, Asian American Arts Centre

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