小吃 SMALL BITES:
Spaces of Exchange
Myths and Legends:
Beyond Chinese-ness
JULY 28 2020
TUESDAY
11AM EST, ZOOM
WITH:
Furen Dai
Catalina Ouyang
MODERATED BY:
Jacqueline Kok
THIS EVENT IS FREE, ONLINE,
AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Spaces of Exchange features a conversation between two arts professionals, with one moderator. No two participants will be based in the same area - the idea of this project to generate conversations between art professionals who have different physical, experiential, psychological backgrounds. Conversations will revolve around topics related to “Chineseness” and the notion of being Chinese in different sociopolitical and geographical settings.
For SE’s inaugural session, Dai, Ouyang, and Kok will explore revisionist capabilities of historical narratives including myths and legends. The discussion will consider how both artists cite these stories whilst navigating in and beyond established structures across generations and geographies: Dai's interest in languages has led her to Nüshu, a secret language created in China to defy patriarchal society, while Ouyang turns to folklore as a source of counternarratives, new spatio-temporal formations, and spiritual surrogates.
Catalina Ouyang [@kittytuna] is a Chinese-American artist by way of Northeast and Midwest suburbia, whose
practice encompasses sculpture, installation, film, performance, language, participatory projects and other modalities to inhabit the interstices of race, gender, myth, desire, subjugation, and monstrosity – demanding atonement and unpacking mythologies, oral history, literature, and open signifiers. Her projects embrace the unstable, the hybrid, and the toxic, questioning how notions of truth, belief, and value are constructed.
Furen Dai [@furendai] is a Chinese artist based in New York. Her practice has focused largely on the economy of culture industry, and how languages lose function, usage, and history. Dai’s hybrid art practice utilizes video, sound, sculpture, painting and collaboration. Her years as a professional translator, having worked as an interpreter prior to her career in the arts, and interest in linguistic studies, have guided her artistic practice since 2015. Interested in language’s central role in the interpretation of culture, Dai’s practice focuses largely on her research and development on the nearly extinct language of NüShu (Woman Script) –the world’s only known language created for and used solely by women.
Jacqueline Kok [@kok.jacqueline.c] is a Canadian-born independent curator of Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese descent and the co-founder of the non-profit organization Triptych Arts, a platform that explores the social role of art and how the potential of that role can be harnessed to build spaces of mutual understanding through innovative curatorial interventions and collaborations with various social justice organizations.