Through September 16, 2012
A look at the impact of Latino and Asian cultures on California’s visual landscape
Pablo Cristi, Sergio De La Torre, Takehito Etani,
Ana Teresa Fernandez, Clement Hanami, Mike Lai,
Angelica Muro & Juan Luna-Avin, Favianna Rodriguez,
Lordy Rodriguez, Tracey Snelling and Charlene Tan
Chico and Chang was originally curated by Kevin B. Chen
for Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco
Supported in part by a grant from the Silicon Valley
Community Foundation Donor Circle for the Arts
www.sjica.org
Chico & Chang
How are place and location defined? Whose stories of immigration are being
told? Where are sites of cultural connection and discord located? How does
popular culture intersect with larger issues of cultural representation?
Chico & Chang examines the impact of Asian and Latino cultures on the
changing face of California through sculpture, video, illustration, and painting. In
our rapidly shifting world, diversity is more than a buzzword; it is a perspective
necessary for growth and adaptability. The 2010 census confirms the continuing
shift of California’s ethnic composition, as Asians and Latinos comprise the
majority of California’s population growth since 2000. Immigrant communities
have always shaped how places look and feel, from domestic interiors to
business signage. This cultural influence goes hand in hand with the changing
demographics of the people who live and work in our state.
The artists in Chico & Chang explore the meshing and sometimes incongruous
cultures from two of California’s largest populations, the Asian and Latino
communities, often times through irreverent humor and sublime candor. Posing
complex questions about the assumption and construction of culture, the work in
this exhibition provides ample opportunity to see where the boundaries of culture
start to fracture, and where they continue to overlap.
-Kevin B. Chen, Curator
ARTISTS:
In this body of work, Pablo Cristi examines the “Nose to Tail” movement, a
culinary practice where the entire animal is utilized in making dishes. Evident
in growing trends in the culinary arts is the continued Western narrative of
“discovery and exploration” which has been in play since ancient times.
Pioneering chefs borrow ideas, ingredients, and processes from traditional
cultural culinary practices, thus rendering them as hip and sophisicated.
Fetishized animal parts that once were disposable in the US, but common in
Latino and Asian cultures, such as heart, feet, and tripe, are now exoticized and
revered for their usage. In Hipster Pig, Cristi uses denim and gold to reference
the long history of exploitation of these materials in Asia and Latin America.
Pablo Cristi (www.pablocristi.com) was born in Los Angeles to Chilean parents
escaping the Pinochet regime. His work is influenced by his critical inquiry
of power, representation, and history. His investigations of the colonial past,
present, and future often take the form of paintings and sculptural objects that
deconstruct and comingle urban visual vernaculars. He is also an educator
and community organizer, teaching and leading youth in art and mural projects
throughout the West Coast. Cristi is a graduate of the MFA program at California
College of the Arts, where he was awarded the Barclay Simpson Award. His work
has recently been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami,
and Oakland.
The Chinese characters of Sergio De La Torre’s neon sign translate to the title
of the work: This is not in Spanish. While the work references the famous Rene
Magritte painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), it also speaks to
the hidden experience of Chinese immigrants living in Northern Mexico, where
the collision of language, culture and identity are subtly evident in places like
shop window signage. De La Torre has been researching Chinese immigrants in
Mexico since he came across a newspaper article reporting hundreds of Chinese
immigrants living and working in a factory there.
Sergio De La Torre’s (www.maquilapolis.com) work focuses on issues of
diaspora, tourism, labor and surveillance technologies. His work has been
exhibited at the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; the Bienal Barro
de America, Museo de Bellas Artes Caracas, Venezuela; Atelier Frankfurt,
Germany; Centro Cultural Tijuana; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San
Francisco. He has received grants from Creative Capital, the Rockefeller
Foundation, and the Sundance Documentary Fund. His video project
MAQUILAPOLIS |city of factories|, an hour-long documentary created in
collaboration with filmmaker Vicky Funari and the Tijuana based NGO Grupo
Factor X, has been screened in over 75 international film festivals and received
the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006. He is
an assistant professor in the Art and Architecture Department at the University of
San Francisco.
In his Harajuku Nope-Ople vs. Luchadores series, Takehito Etani explores
spirituality in two seemingly secular cultural communities: young fashionistas in
the Harajuku district of Tokyo and lucha libre wrestlers of Mexico. By meticulously
erasing people out of the printed photographs, Etani searches for the true nature
hidden underneath the layers of costume and fashion. This process of inquiry
references Buddhist philosophies of the self as well as the history of lucha libre
mask design, which evokes animals, gods, and other spiritual archetypes. The
work also alludes to suminuri kyokasho, a self-sensoring exercise practiced
during the American occupation of Japan after WWII. Japanese students and
teachers would black out sections of textbooks referring to imperial, nationalistic,
and militaristic ideologies. With this series of work, however, Etani manipulates
printed magazines and books not as a mechanism for suppression, but as a
means for liberation.
Takehito Etani (www.takehitoetani.com) works with various media including
electronics, wearable technology, installations, sculpture, performance,
and video. He is interested in creating new rituals that acknowledge and
transform everyday life. His work has been exhibited internationally at the 2006
International Symposium of Electronic Art; VIPER Basel Festival for Film, Video
and New Media, Switzerland; the Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded
Media, Germany; as well as at Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, Kawasaki,
Japan. Born in Aichi, Japan, Etani currently lives and works in Oakland,
California. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, New York and his MFA from
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg and attended the Skowhegan School of
Painting and Sculpture, New York.
Ana Teresa Fernandez’ installation Carry On examines how immigrant
communities resourcefully utilize ubiquitous plaid nylon shopping bags as
multifunctional material – not just for grocery shopping and taking the wash to
the laundromat, but also for sectional home decoration and placemats. She
creates both a fictional and representational interior of a household, where every
surface is covered in this material. Objects blend into the tapestry of this unique,
recognizable pattern, obfuscating both their identity and function. Through this
installation, Fernandez hints at a metaphor of immigrants within our society, who
inconspicuously carry the heavy workload of service and cleaning industries.
Ana Teresa Fernandez (www.anateresafernandez.com) received her MFA from
San Francisco Art Institute. She has received several awards for her artwork
including the Tournasol Award from Headlands Center for the Arts; the National
Association of Latino Art and Cultures Award; San Francisco Arts Community
Individual Artists Commission; Creative Work Fund and the Murphy Cadogan
Award. She has completed residencies at the Fondation d’Art Jacmel, Haiti, and
in Juarez, Mexico through the LEF Foundation. Her work has been exhibited
locally at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Electric Works, Galeria de la Raza,
Luggage Store Gallery, Queen’s Nails Annex, and Headlands Center for the Arts,
and internationally at Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico; Fondation d’Art Jacmel,
Haiti; Sun Valley Arts Center, Idaho; and Galeria Nacional Museo San Jose,
Costa Rica.
Clement Hanami’s Goon Squad Garage is a rickshaw tricked-out with lowrider hydrolics. Speakers attached below the seat play the tunes of War and
The Stylistics. As a Japanese American growing up in the predominantly Latino
suburb of East Los Angeles, Hanami’s work is infused with the personal. The
artist remarks, “I look at what it is about this experience that is unique and how it
impacts being Japanese American or being a minority within a minority.”
Clement Hanami’s mother is a hibakusha, a Japanese atomic bomb survivor
and his father was a World War II evacuee. He received his MFA from the
University of California Los Angeles in Studio Art with a specialization in New
Genres. His work has been exhibited at The Geffen Contemporary at the
Museum of Contemporary Art/LA, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles
Municipal Art Gallery, Armory Center for the Arts, John Ansen Ford Theater,
California Museum of Photography, Long Beach Museum of Art, AFI National
Video Festival, Santa Monica Museum of Art, KCET Independent Eye, Westwind
Magazine, and Show-Mag Gallery. In addition to his art practice, Hanami is the
Art Director at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
Mike Lai’s Untitled (Operation Swiftwater) depicts the immigrant’s treacherous
journey across bodies of water to arrive to the US. The work draws inspiration
from a tragic event in 1988 when a group of immigrants were smuggled across
the Niagara River from Ontario to New York in a blow-up raft purchased at
Walmart. All of the passengers died en route, including a six-year-old girl.
Referencing the tragic drama of the 17th century painting The Raft of Medusa, by
French Romanic painter Théodore Géricault, Lai’s video captures the dramatic
tension between life and death and triumph and failure, and distills the collective
stories of people risking their lives to enter this country.
Mike Lai (www.laidynasty.com) was born in Hong Kong in 1980, and came to
the US as a student in 1993. As a Chinese immigrant living in the US, he is
interested in the representation of Asian identity in the media. He received his
BA from Davidson College, NC and his MFA from San Francisco Art Institute
in 2005. His work has been exhibited at Center for Outdoor Contemporary Art,
GenArt San Francisco, Queen’s Nails Annex, and Southern Exposure. He has
performed at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and
at Washington Square Park in San Francisco, for which he received an Individual
Artist Commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2007.
In Untitled (Club Lido) collaborators Angelica Muro and Juan Luna-Avin depict
the downtown San Jose subcultures at Lido Night Club. While San Jose has
large Vietnamese and Mexican populations, these two groups rarely interact. At
Lido Night Club, however, Vietnamese performers entertain weekend crowds
upstairs, while club-goers dance to Mexican banda music downstairs. The club
has also become the epicenter of a growing Latin transgender community in San
Jose. In their drawings and installation, Muro & Luna-Avin explore and celebrate
the unexpected subcultures present in San Jose.
Angelica Muro (www.angelicamuro.net) received her MFA from Mills College in
2005, and a BA in Photography from San Jose State University in 1998. Recent
exhibitions include Packing Heat, Slanguage, Wilmington, CA; Better to Die on
My Feet, Self-Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA; and INTERSTICE, CAS gallery,
Miami, FL. She has been commissioned to create artworks for San Jose’s
MACLA, which included digital murals for O’Donnell Park Gardens, and the
San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Muro’s curatorial projects have been
awarded grants from the Center for Cultural Innovation, James Irvine Foundation,
and Adobe Youth Voices. She is co-founder, principle, and curator of Space
47 projects, which ran from 2007-2009 in downtown San Jose. Muro teaches
Integrated Media and Photography at CSU Monterey Bay in the Visual & Public
Art Department.
Juan Luna-Avin is a multi-disciplinary artist inspired by music, youth cultures,
subcultures, and his upbringing in Mexico City. He received his MFA in Art
Practice from Stanford University and a BFA in Painting from the San Francisco
Art Institute, where he was an Osher Scholar. Recent awards include a Suzanne
Baruch Lewis MFA Grant (2010) and a McNamara Family Creative Arts Grant
from the Hispanic Scholarship Fund (2009). He has participated in exhibitions
locally at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Queen’s Nails Projects, Southern
Exposure, and Baer Ridgway Exhibitions. He is a Lecturer at CSU Monterey Bay
in the Visual & Public Art Department.
Favianna Rodriguez’ DREAMers, which includes two linoleum block prints
and a video, exposes the stories of undocumented youth and their complicated
relationship to the DREAM Act, legislation that would allow undocumented youth
the opportunity to earn legal status if they met certain conditions, including
attending college or joining the military. The word “DREAMers” evolved from the
ongoing fight to pass this legislation.
In the 11 years since the introduction of the DREAM Act, a powerful youth
immigrant social movement has emerged, led by undocumented students who
often declare that they are “Undocumented and Unafraid,” shocking even their
allies in the pro-migrant field. This courageous rejection of the term “illegal”
has created a force of undocumented youth organizers, who lead coordinated
campaigns around the country to secure rights for all immigrants.
In the process of making this work, Rodriguez met Julio Salgado, an
undocumented, queer, artist activist. Inspired by his story as well as his comicbook style of drawing, Rodriguez and Salgado collaborated. The cartoon figures
that comprise the background of the linoleum prints are Julio’s drawings of
undocumented youth and the careers they would want to pursue if they had the
ability to become legalized citizens.
To learn more about how you can urge President Obama to halt the deportations
of immigrant youth, visit the following websites: UnitedWeDream.org;
DreamActivist.org; Presente.org; DreamersAdrift.com.
Favianna Rodriguez (www.favianna.com) was named as one of 50 Visionaries
who are changing the world by the UTNE Reader in 2008. She has lectured
widely on the use of art in civic engagement and the work of artists who, like
herself, bridge the community and the museum, and connect the local to the
international. Her work has been exhibited locally at Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts, de Young Museum, Oakland Museum, Intersection for the Arts and
nationally at Museo del Barrio, New York; Mexican Fine Arts Center, Chicago;
Huntington Museum and Galería Sin Fronteras, Austin, TX; and internationally
in Japan, Italy, England, Belgium, and Mexico. Her works appear in collections
at Bellas Artes in Mexico City, The Glasgow Print Studio in Scotland, and Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2003, she co-founded the Taller Tupac Amaru
printing studio to foster resurgence in screenprinting. She is co-founder of the
EastSide Arts Alliance and Visual Element, both programs dedicated to training
young artists in the tradition of muralism. She is also co-founder/president of
Tumis Inc., a bilingual design studio helping to integrate art with emerging
technologies.
Lordy Rodriguez writes, “There is something inherently American or Western
with the terms Chico and Chang. They’re like cultural equivalents to a Taco Bell
or Panda Express, where the cultural origination is obvious but seen as American
when placed in their ‘homeland.’” To play with the tension between location,
culture and language, the arist created fictional maps of Chico’s America and
Chang’s America, with the “locations” referencing the top 10 Asian and Latino
neighborhoods in America. Even though these neighborhoods are predominantly
Asian or Latino, their names, like Rockdale Estates in Miami (38.5% Latino)
or Mission Hills-Vineyards North in Fremont (74.6% Asian) lack any cultural
connection to their populations. The opposite is true in well-known immigrant
neighborhoods like the Mission District in San Francisco and the multitude of
Chinatowns across the US, where the cultural representations remain strong but
the neighborhood populations do not. The color patterns in Rodriguez’s maps
relate back to those cultural connotations. For example, in Chang’s America, the
red and yellow reference the Chinese flag, the gray is from the color of the Mao
suit, and the purple represents death in many east Asian countries. In Chico’s
America, the red, green, and white are from the Mexican flag, the orange relates
to migrant workers, and beige is often used as a gang color.
Lordy Rodriguez (www.hosfeltgallery.com) was born in the Philippines, raised in
Louisiana and Texas, and currently lives in Hayward, CA. He obtained his BFA
from the School of Visual Arts, New York and his MFA at Stanford University.
Recent exhibitions include The Map is Not the Territory at Hosfelt Gallery, New
York (2011), Surface Depths at Nevada Art Museum (2009), States of America
at Austin Museum of Art (2009), 10th Annual Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2007),
The California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art (2006), and 25: A Quarter
Century of New Art in Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2004).
Through manipulation of scale, Tracey Snelling creates worlds that
simultaneously reference real places while invoking archetypal ideas of place.
Drawing upon recent trips and residencies in China and Mexico, Mexicalichina
is a hybridized world that combines public street elements that characterize both
countries, including billboards, signs, architecture, and props. As immigration
continues to change the face of the United States, Snelling’s work documents
how communities throughout California look and feel, from East Los Angeles to
East Oakland, Monterey Park to the Mission District.
Tracey Snelling (www.traceysnelling.com) received her BFA from the University
of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and currently lives and works in the Bay Area. Her
work has been exhibited at numerous museums including Gemeentemuseum
Helmond, the Netherlands; PS1 MOMA, NY; Frist Museum, Nashville, TN;
Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; The Museum of
Arts and Design, NY. She has had solo exhibitions throughout the U.S. as well
as in China, Belgium, the Netherlands, and England. Travelling extensively for
exhibitions and research, Snelling’s exploration of China began with a threemonth residency and solo exhibition at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing in 2009. She
returned to China a year later when selected for a residency with the Shanghai
Zendai MOMA at their museum in Zhujiajiao. Her latest research trip to Mexico
explored Tijuana and its Chinese community.
When artist Charlene Tan was 14 years old, her family recieved a traditional
Chinese-style table as a gift from a friend. She writes, “We swooned because my
family had just bought a new home and we needed furniture. As we unpacked
the table piece-by-piece my younger brother and I noticed handprints in dust on
the finished surfaces…Then, we saw small handprints in wood stain and shellac.
Our hearts sank when we realized the hands smaller than ours built our table.
Silent anger laced with guilt took over; we could be these unknown workers.”
Silent Labor recreates this poignant chilhood discovery into a sculptural artwork. In
using a mirror to reveal the otherwise hidden powdery handmarks underneath the
table, Chan implicates our own relationship to the objects we buy and the hidden
labor involved in creating everyday things. The artists writes, “It is much harder to
sell anything if people know that laborers are treated unfairly, and are unwilling
to recognize the consequences of injustice. Yet we live in a time that chooses to
ignore a growing population of unjustly treated laborers…We are surrounded by
the labor of silenced individuals who live in our world, our communities, and our
neighborhoods; can we live in environments saturated in injustice, in which we are
passive oppressors of a silent population?”
Charlene Tan was born in Houston, Texas and spent her childhood in Manila,
Philippines and San Francisco. She received her BA in Contemporary Art History
from San Francisco Art Institute in 2010 and has been consistently active in the
local arts community for many years - volunteering, interning, and working at local
museums and galleries. She has exhibited locally at Ampersand International Arts,
Intersection for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Root Division, and others.
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