Showing posts with label Press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Press. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
A Critical History: AAAC in Reviews

  • July 31, 2018
  • 1

Throughout the decades AAAC has received critical attention from various sources. While going through our archives we recently rediscovered several articles referencing the Asian American Art Centre’s exhibitions and activities, a few of which we present here.

 AAAC is particularly thankful to Holland Cotter for his continued acknowledgement of AAAC’s work, in addition to that of other diverse artists and organizations. Cotter has written for the New York Times since 1998 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2009; his focus on multiculturalism has brought many artists of color into the mainstream. He reviewed a number of AAAC’s exhibitions from 1999 to 2003.


Reception for China: June 4, 1989 at Blum Helman Warehouse, Oct. 1989. Photo courtesy of AAAC.

In his 2001 article on art in the Lower East Side, Cotter describes AAAC as “a hard-working, meagerly financed grass-roots institution that caters to community needs but has an internationalist perspective broader than that of most galleries in the mainstream,” adding that “under the direction of Robert Lee, this nonprofit space has given many Asian-American artists, young and old, exposure impossible to find elsewhere.” On the 1999 exhibition 7 lb. 9 oz.: The Reintegration of Tradition in Contemporary Art, Cotter writes that AAAC “was founded long before multiculturalism was so much as a glint in the mainstream art world’s eye” and praises AAAC’s “very smart tabloid-format magazine” ArtSpiral. 

 Cotter has reviewed other AAAC exhibitions including Colin Lee's solo show for the Sixth International Asian Art Fair (2001), Toyo Tsuchiya’s Six O’Clock Observed (1999), 2 Far 2 Close (2000), Zheng Lianjie (2002), and Dream So Much 2 (2003).

Installation view of China: June 4, 1989, remounted in 2014. Photo courtesy of AAAC.

To note some additional press AAAC has received, renowned art historian Thomas McEvilley (1939-2013) wrote several articles for AAAC’s exhibitions and catalogues. One such article from 2000, “Asian American Art: The Transitional Generation”, was rediscovered and posted to the blog earlier this summer; a 1996 article, “Negotiating Modernisms: Contemporary Asian Art and the West,” is available on our website. 

China: June 4, 1989, an exhibition on the student uprising at Tiananmen Square that included work by major figures including Xu Bing, Nam June Paik, Zhang Hongtu, Barbara Kruger, Leon Golub, Vito Acconci, and Byron Kim, received significant critical attention. Art in America magazine at the end of 1989 chose China: June 4 as one of the most significant exhibition for the year. In 1992 Douglas Utter wrote in the New Art Examiner, "China: June 4, 1989 is an intimate exhibition. Each work comes forward to bear witness on its own terms. [...] A moving exhibition of political art, it transcended the usual considerations of both politics and art to indict a brutal moment of recent history.” The show was remounted at the Whitebox Art Center in 2014 on the 25th anniversary of the incident, and was reviewed in Manhattan Digest and Beyond Chinatown.


Eye to Eye panel, 1983. Photo courtesy of AAAC.

Recently Ryan Wong paid special attention to AAAC’s role in creating a space for Asian Americans in the arts in his 2017 Hyperallergic article “A Brief History of the Art Collectives of NYC’s Chinatown,” where he describes our 1982 panel and exhibition Eye to Eye on the definition of Asian American art as well as the China: June 4, 1989 exhibition. AAAC was also mentioned in a New York Times article by Nikil Saval on Tseng Kwong Chi and Martin Wong, whom we exhibited in 1985 along with Ai Weiwei. 

 AAAC continues to be grateful for your recognition and support.

–Written by intern Amy Hong

Read more
Thursday, May 22, 2014
no image

Asian American Arts Centre
Presents

China: June 4, 1989

The 25th Anniversary Exhibition
In Commemoration of the Tiananmen Square 1989 Student Movement
   
June 1st   –  10th  2014
Opening Sunday, June 1 all day   
5:00PM-8:00PM refreshments
Closing Tuesday, June 10    5:00PM - 7:00PM
Whitebox Art Center
329 Broome Street, NY, NY 10002


In collaboration with Whitebox Art Center, Asian American Arts Centre presents, “China: June 4, 1989”, an art exhibition. The public is welcome to this beautiful gallery on the lower level, which is open from 11:00AM-6:00PM on weekdays and 12:00PM-6:00PM on weekends, from June 1st through June 10th. Curated by Robert Lee, the exhibition features works from artists that were part of the original 1989-90 exhibition. The white walled gallery with its high ceiling will be transformed into a commemoration of this much-celebrated exhibition.

Fifty artists will be participating. Some of the artists included are:  Vito Acconci, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Betty Beaumont, Luis Camnitzer, Mel Chin, Agnes Denes, Lotus Do, John Duff, Leon Golub, Billy Harlem, Edgar Heap of Birds, Ava Hsueh, Kunio Izuka, Ik Joong Kang, Donald Lipski, Lilliana Porter, Rumiko Tsuda/Daniel Georges, Dolly Unithan, Martin Wong, Sofia Zezmer, and Zhang Hongtu.  A full listing of artists can be requested. Alongside these works there will be a wall of clippings displaying news articles and mementos for those who want to learn exactly what happened - many of these will be in Chinese. 

The original exhibition, which accumulated over 300 artists at Blum Helman Warehouse in SoHo, then later at PS 1 in LIC, eventually encompassing 174 standing panels (doors) linked to form a freestanding expandable wall. Over 80 small works were also on display. Artworks represented artists from Argentina, Sweden, Britain, Italy, France, Greece, Japan, and Korea. Every piece was created in the moment of this terrible incident. Thus each piece reflects an artist’s immediate response from their own artistic and cultural stance, articulating peoples’ outcries in vivid, powerful art forms. Multiple perspectives gathered here, reflecting a truly diverse American, and in this sense, global response to expanding political horrors. Many of the artworks and the history of this terrible confrontation can be seen athere
.

In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a special screening of “Portraits of Loss and the Quest for Justice”, a documentary produced by Human Rights In China with footage shot by the Tiananmen Mothers – a group of family members of those killed during the violent crackdown on the 1989 Democracy Movement. The documentary will be on view during the opening and closing receptions, at which time a staff person from HRIC will give a brief introduction of the video.  Light refreshments will be available. For more information on the Tiananmen Mothers and HRIC resources, please visit: here


 As the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student massacre approaches, the erasure from history of this incident in China seems complete. For the peoples of every other nation in the world, however, the Tiananmen Square Massacre remains an open question. Many in China have courageously stood up against this enforced amnesia— foremost among them are the Tiananmen Mothers—to press for truth, accountability, and compensation.  Twenty-five years ago, in their peaceful protests, the students laid bare their yearnings for a clean government and a more just and open society. In response, the Chinese authorities used weapons to declare to their own people and the world how unwilling they were to heed these calls, and how definitively they would try to silence them.

As a human question the tragedy and premeditation of this incident is incalculable, impacting China as well as the world. The humanity of the students was clear, and their murder by authorities an incalculable outrage. Yes, they did shoot the students. A horror magnified a thousand times by the media for the watching world. It focused and transformed the clash of Chinese political destinies into a televised drama of global proportions, imprinting itself on the human imaginary in epic dimensions. Never before was such violence turned into a spectacle with weeks to prepare a global viewership for the unspeakable to become suddenly - reality.

Now, more than ever, the international community needs to recognize this human tragedy, this global trauma for what it was and remains - a human spectacle of incalculable proportions, buried and awaiting resurrection.  The end of official impunity needs to be achieved concretely. Tiananmen Mothers have devoted the past two decades to documenting the lives snuffed out by the government’s guns, and to remind us all that this national wound needs healing, and a just resolution. To resist enforced amnesia, expose the truth and bring justice to the Tiananmen Mothers is to undo the basis for so much of the corruption that is flourishing today. However what is not concrete, the reverberations still echoing throughout the world, in the hearts of the people who were there, concretely and vicariously, they watched and saw. Their grief and outrage and humanity are still to be addressed – with justice, and with space - public space to recognize openly and remember, resolve this crime, to grieve, restore and to reconcile.  

AAAC and Whitebox Art Center welcome student groups, educators and the general public to the exhibition space in their visit to the Lower East Side. AAAC staff will be available to answer questions from the public as well as the press, by appointment.

Organizational Background
Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) was founded in 1974. It is a 501(c)(3) that engages with artists, students, organizations, and community groups to enable the creative encounter, and preservation of their visions and knowledge through the arts. In this way the continuum of cultural values & artistic traditions – particularly those of Asia and the West – as they engage each other in local and community arenas, find vitality and renewal. The annual Visual Art Exhibition series, and the AAAC Artists Archive begun in 1983, grew until its collected materials could be processed into a professional archival environment. Its digital component – artasiamerica – went public in 2009 and serves an online historical image and document archive focused on Asian American visual culture from 1945 to the present.

Asian American Arts Centre Inc., its exhibition and education program is supported by The Bay and Paul Foundation. The support of Asian Americans For Equality and Manhattan Mini Storage/Edison Properties Inc. continues to be vital, along with the support of others like Pearl River Mart, New York Cosmopolitan Lions Club and Materials for the Arts. AAAC recognizes the support of individuals, namely Wing Tek Lum, Jody and John Arnhold, Germane Wong, John Yu, Fay Torres Yap, Charles Yuen, Susan Switzer/Daniel Orlow, Norma Tam, Jeanne Lee Jackson, Edward Ma, Dennis Donohue, May Jew, Pam Lee & Tom Chin, Roudy Leath, Wing Lee Yee, Paul O’Neill and Liz Young, Arthur Neis, Richard Kenny Esq, and the many generous friends of the Asian American Arts Centre. Special thanks to Whitebox Art Center and to Human Rights In China, and to all the artists who participated in this effort, their support helped make this exhibition possible.

Read more
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
no image

PRESS RELEASE



Contact: 
Robert Lee 212.233.2154
Karanja Gaçuça 646 675 9324
Alexandra Boonekam 646 538 1193
aaacinfo@artspiral.org 




March for Danny Chen - OWS Supports the Chinatown Community

At an American Army base in Kandahar Province of Afghanistan on October 3rd 2011, Private Danny Chen was found dead in the living quarters of the army base where he was stationed with an alleged gunshot wound below his chin. 
The US military has informed his family, a 19 year old from Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, in NYC, that he had been beaten by superior officers and subjected to racially motivated taunts prior to his death. The military has said they are continuing their investigation. Danny Chen was laid to rest on October 13, and the family still has not received any report or explanation for their tragic loss. 

This is one of a number of recent cases of hazing in the military that has led to the deaths of Asian Americans while in service in the US military. Without strong advocacy, such cases are rarely covered adequately, except in the local press. This parallels a major problem that is now receiving attention, of bullying in schools and colleges that can have a lasting impact on young people lives. This question has now been taken up by an Asian American Initiative in the White House. 

The members of Occupy Wall Street (“OWS”) takes this opportunity to join with Asian Americans and the Chinatown community to march for justice for Private Danny Chen on December 15, 6pm.  Starting at the Army Recruiting Center at 143 Chambers St and marching to Columbus Park, members and supporters of Occupy Wall Street as the 99%, wish to demonstrate that the concerns and issues of all the diverse neighborhoods of New York City are part of what is real and important to all who are part of the OWS family.  Particularly for Asian Americans – the broad diversity of Asians in the United States, who have often been forgotten when the questions of justice and inequity are raised, OWS affirms our rich cultural diversity as assets, and wants to emphasize, that the differences of race and culture will not impede, but rather enhance the broad coming together of people for justice and change. 

OWS supports the Chinatown community’s demand for a transparent investigation, and the goals of justice for Private Danny Chen. The army and the US military must make clear what affirmative steps they are taking to integrate, support, and protect its soldiers.       
Read more
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )