Friday, November 11, 2011
The retirement party of Suki Terada Ports

  • November 11, 2011
  • 1

A retirement party for Suki Terada Ports was held on September 29th, 2011, at the Japanese American Association (JAA), located at 15 W 44th Street in New York City.

Suki Terada Ports has been a community activist since the 1960s. She founded the Family Health Project (FHP) in 1980 to raise awareness about the impact of HIV/AIDS on communities of color. Almost two hundred people attended the retirement party as Suki’s friends and colleagues spoke at the party in celebration of her achievements.  


 
 Suki Ports, Cobi Narita of Jazz center of New York (bottom middle), Soki Lee (bottom left), and their friends. 

Read more
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Asian American Community March in Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street


On November 5, 2011, Asian American community members will again demonstrate support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Community members will start their march at 1:30 PM in front of the Bank of America on Bayard Street and the Bowery and march together to Zuccotti Park on Broadway and Cedar Street in time to join the weekly meeting of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators at 2 PM.

Asian Americans have had a long history of involvement in movements to correct injustices in our society. The Occupy Wall Street movement is bringing much needed attention to the plight of many Americans who are struggling from the economic downturn and the increasing divide between the have’s and have not’s.

As 13% of the population, Asian American New Yorkers also have much to lose if we as a city and nation continue on this path where budget cuts are decimating safety net services. The Asian American community stands in solidarity to protect the most vulnerable in our society and call for fair share tax reform.

We want to take this opportunity and join with the remarkable people who have stood their ground and be part of the Occupy Wall Street. Join us, join the many individuals who will come to Zuccotti Park tomorrow at 2pm, and who have signed on to endorse this Call for Action!

The path of the march with the banner “Occupy Wall Street with Peace” will be from Bwoery to Worth Street onto Centre Street and Park Row, walking past City Hall Park to Broadway to our destination Zuccotti Park on Cedar Street. We welcome others to join the march from the start or anywhere along the route or at 2pm at Zuccotti Park.
Read more
Monday, October 31, 2011
Army Pvt. Danny Chen Died of Unspecified Causes During Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanisatan

 

On Oct. 3, her son, Pvt. Danny Chen, was found shot to death in a guard tower on an American outpost in Afghanistan. He was 19 years old.
Three days after his death, a military official told Ms. Chen and her husband, Yan Tao Chen, that investigators had not yet determined whether the shot to the head was self-inflicted or fired by someone else.
But the official also revealed, the Chens said, that Private Chen had been subjected to physical abuse and ethnic slurs by superiors, who one night dragged him out of bed and across the floor when he failed to turn off a water heater after showering.
Since then, the military has given little information about its investigation to the Chens, immigrants who speak no English.
Via NYTimes
Read more
Thursday, October 20, 2011
ArtReview Names China's Ai Weiwei Most Powerful Person In The Art World

  • October 20, 2011
  • 1
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei heads the 2011 edition of ArtReview’s Power 100, the magazine's tenth annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most powerful players.

Only the second artist to top the list (after Damien Hirst in 2005 and 2008), Ai, who was arrested and imprisoned by the Chinese authorities for 81 days earlier this year, was ranked number one as a result of his activism as much as his art practice – both articulating a move away from the idea that artists work within a privileged zone limited by the walls of a gallery or museum.

Indeed the list, the most international to date, is marked by a number of practitioners – among them Cindy Sherman (7), Peter Fischli & David Weiss (28), Liam Gillick (32), Walid Raad (75), David Hammons (83), Christoph Büchel (88) and artist-filmmakers such as Steve McQueen (59) and Shirin Neshat (86) – whose work both enforces and questions the connection between art and life.

Alongside them, and at a time when funding is hard to come by outside the biggest commercial galleries, the list also highlights a group of agencies – among them Artangel (55), Townhouse (56), Creative Time (57), Outset (71) – that help facilitate the production of challenging art projects, as well as distribution agencies such as e-flux (5) that help provide these projects with an audience, and the thinkers (Boris Groys, 53, Slavoj Zizek, 65, Kaja Silverman, 95) who provide them with a context.
The list can be seen in full here, with the November issue of the magazine carrying full profiles, analysis, features, photography portfolios and commissioned artwork by Matt Mullican.
Read more
Sunday, October 9, 2011
no image


Zuccotti park at Broadway and Fulton is the site of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration.  In the early afternoon it’s still very crowded and here and there are speakers and discussion groups.  This older gentlemen offered his own set of solutions.


 
Serious discussions and planning meetings seem to be constantly happening.  Behind this group is a performance artist in costume. 


 
Someone getting a haircut.  Maybe one of the organizing leaders? Maybe not?


 
In the middle of the park is an essential area where organizing efforts are sustained and maintained. 



An area for posters, many quite interesting and insightful, worth reading.  They reflect the tone, the energy and the outlook of those gathered here. 
Read more
Friday, October 7, 2011
AAAC Artists Archive - Introduction and Demonstration

This is an AAAC event.

Time:  Wednesday, October 12, 4:oo p.m. - 6:oo p.m; 
           Thursday, October 13, 6:oo p.m. - 8:oo p.m.


Location: Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Community Center
                107 Suffolk St (at Rivington), New York, NY

An introduction and demonstration of 
the AAAC Artists Archive and its online site:
 ARTASIAMERICA



The contemporary art of the last sixty years by Asian American artists exhibited by Asian American Arts Centre will be accessed at this event, particularly during the talk by the curator/executive director Robert Lee.

The AAAC Artists Archive is a research and educational archive documenting the history of Asian Pacific American Artists in the United States since 1945 to the present. Focused on twenty six years of AAAC contemporary art exhibitions held in the Lower Manhattan, it is inclusive of American artists deeply influenced by Asia. Its online counterpart – Artasiamerica.org is a high-quality research tool as well as an innovative educational asset for college and high school students, educators, and community members.

Foremost, it features images of the art works of the artists themselves, with written material to support them. Together they enable a direct experience of the art of Asian American artists and the issues and questions of cultural diversity in America.

Web Sites: www.artasiamerica.org www.artspiral.org

No RSVP required. Sit is limited so please come early.


 
The painting of "Charlie Chan the detective" is by Roger Shimomura

Read more
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
MARVELS AND MONSTERS: Unmasking Asian Images In U.S. Comics, 1942-1986 Exhibition



Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University in collaboration with the NYU Fales Library & Special Collections presents--MARVELS AND MONSTERS: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986 The William F. Wu Collection at NYU Fales Library & Special Collections

Opening Reception and Talk with William F. Wu and Curator Jeff Yang 
Thursday, May 26, 2011 | 6:00PM-8:00PM

Over four decades that included some of the most turbulent times in our nation's history, science fiction author and cultural studies scholar William F. Wu painstakingly gathered an archive of comics distinguished not only by its size and reach, but by its scope: It is perhaps the world's only, and certainly the largest, collection of comic books featuring images of Asians and Asian Americans. Marvels and Monsters draws from this important collection, recently donated with the help of A/P/A Institute to the NYU Fales Library & Special Collections.
Read more
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Enemy Alien: Confrontation with detention regimes of past and present.


As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 arrives, Alwan for the Arts is presenting a screening of Enemy Alien (outreach/education version, 60 minutes) followed by a discussion of the film's themes of shared struggle between Muslim and Japanese Americans in the face of wartime xenophobia and racism, and how this solidarity can inspire an effective response to the massive expansion of immigrant detention and deportation which has continued from 9/11 to this day.

Enemy Alien, a first-person documentary, is the gripping story of the fight to free Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a gentle but indomitable Palestinian-born human rights activist detained in a post-9/11 sweep of Muslim immigrants. Told through the eyes of the filmmaker, the grandson of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, this documentary takes on unprecedented intimacy and historical resonance. 

As the filmmaker confronts his own family legacy of incarceration, his involvement in the current struggle deepens. Resistance brings consequences: In retaliation for organizing a massive protest from inside detention, Farouk is beaten and locked in solitary confinement, and his American-born son Tarek is arrested in a counterterrorism investigation into the documentary itself.


A project of Life or Liberty
Directed by Konrad Aderer

Thursday, September 8
7:00pm
Alwan for the Arts
16 Beaver Street
Manhattan, NYC
 
(via http://enemyalien.org )
Read more
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Workshop - How Asian American Sexuality As Portrayed In popular Media?


Community Service Learning Project Workshop of the Chinatown Health Center on Asian Americans in the Media.  AAAC partnering with CBWCHC to develop a multimedia project created by the student interns to develop interns' understanding of the "Model Minority" myth, how it connects to health disparities, and how these concepts can be effectively expressed through art.  

The workshop looked at how Asian American sexuality as portrayed in popular media and found examples of Asian Americans in the media that work against these portrayed images/messages.  

The public exhibition and reception will take place on Tuesday, August 16th, 5:30PM - 9:00PM at Red Egg Restaurant, 202 Centre Street, NY.



Read more
Friday, August 12, 2011
no image


Nearly 15 million Americans claim Asian descent, and a new art exhibition at one of America's premier art museums explores the Asian-American experience and identity. The BBC's Jane O'Brien reports from Washington.
Roger Shimomura was born in Seattle at the start of World War II. When Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, he and his family were taken from their home and sent to an internment camp in Idaho.
They had lived in America for three generations - but the US government saw them first as Japanese and considered them a threat. Now, he is one of seven artists exploring the nature of Asian-American identity in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.
"Far too many American-born citizens of Asian descent continue to be thought of as only 'American knock-offs,'" he writes in the introduction to his paintings, which focus on the challenges of being different in America. He confronts stereotypes through self-portraits, placing his own likeness at the centre of popular cultural images.


My Call to Arms . Tam Tran. Digital print, 2009
'Humour And Rage'
Shimomura takes the iconic 19th Century painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware, for instance, and substitutes his own face for the president's.
"There's a tension here between belonging and being outside that is essential to the Asian-American experience. In this work, Roger proclaims quite loudly that he is an American. His art is in a sense a kind of response to the experiences that he has felt living as an eternal foreigner.""When I look at this picture I see both the humour and the rage that is at the heart of his work," says curator Frank Goodyear.
That theme is mirrored in the work of 38-year-old CYJO, a self-described Kyopo - the Korean term for ethnic Koreans living abroad. Born in Seoul, raised in the US state of Maryland and now living in Beijing, she photographed more than 200 people, mainly from America's Kyopo community.
The scale and format of each portrait is identical - full length against a white background - a style that is in direct contrast to the subjects themselves, who share very few physiognomic features and reflect their differing social and cultural environments in the way they dress.


According to Konrad Ng, director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Program, such depictions force viewers to confront their preconceived notions of what it means to be Asian American.


American vs. Japs 2 . Roger Shimomura. Acrylic on canvas, 2010 
Read more
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Exhibition: Report From Japan by Go Nakamura, Canna Sasa, & Hiroaki Sasa


“Report from Japan” by Go Nakamura, Canna Sasa, Hiroaki Sasa

Location: Graphite. 38 Marcy Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Exhibition: July 29th - 31th, 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 30th, 6pm-9pm


An exhibition 'Report From Japan' at Graphite. features works of photographers Go Nakamura, Canna Sasa, and Hiroaki Sasa, video artist's photographs and videos they had captured while providing volunteer work in Japan. The opening reception will follow with a talk by the artists. This is the report from the experiences at the scenes with real photos and videos images that are barely shared to us in NYC.

Canna Sasa, photographer and her husband Hiroaki Sasa, video artist  went to the Tohoku area in Japan to do volunteer work from May 15-29, 2011. 


For more information go to..
Report From Japan's Facebook
Graphite
Read more
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
"Growing Peace" - Indira Johnson's fields art project in Oregon, IL

Bird view of "Growing Peace"
Walking through "Growing Peace"


Indira Freitas Johnson is an artist, cultural worker, and activist based out of the Evanston, Illinois. Though she has resided in the States for well over two decades, Indira has continuingly kept close ties with her homeland, India. She uses a wide array of mediums for her creations, her materials often being derived from multiple sources ranging from discarded man-made items to the recycled and more organic. Her subjects often ponder the origins of South Asian values and ethics, spiritual development, and issues of social justice and humanitarianism. “The influences of my mother, a social activist and my father, an artist and a follower of Gandhi have been predominant in my life and art,” she writes, “I continue to deal with the same issues that have preoccupied me for the last two decades - the growth towards a spiritual existence as an individual and as part of the human continuum.”

Her most recent work is with the Fields Project of Oregon, Illinois, where she created a five-acre field sculpture titled Growing Peace. It is in this work that Indira contemplates the power of human perspective and its relationship to the process of finding peace within civilization. Her design, "Growing Peace" was meant to imprint the earth, inviting observers to become participants in our shared goal for peace. Indira employed the foot, a symbol that continues to dominate her work as the primary motif in "Growing Peace". She believes it's power lies in its universality and we stand and walk without feet, which gives us stability and grounds us to the earth. This is Indira's statement of her concept:
Read more
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )