Unlike their Asian-born predecessors, who immigrated to the United States and always considered themselves outsiders looking in, these artists are not obsessed with self, multiculturalism or identity politics. Instead, their choice of subjects and technique is diverse, outward-looking and–as the show’s title, taken from a 1978 Blondie hit, makes clear–grounded in pop culture. Iranian-American Ala Ebtekar moved from Berkeley, California, to Tehran at 19 to study miniature paintings. But he ended up preferring “coffeehouse painting”– large oils that illustrate oral narratives instead of the more highbrow classical written texts from which Persian miniatures are usually drawn. His huge whitewashed installation juxtaposes boom boxes and sneakers that hark back to his urban U.S. childhood with objects from 19th-century Iranian coffeehouses: samovars, cups, hookahs, cushioned sofas and wall paintings of wrestler heroes revered by Iranian working classes.
Other artists borrow the technique but not the subject matter of their ancestors. Pakistani-American Saira Wasim returns consciously to the tradition of classical Mughal miniature painting. But instead of the hunting, battles and royal entertainments those works depicted, she chooses as her subjects Bush and Blair, Cheney and Rumsfeld, the Iraq war. By contrast, Indian-American Chitra Ganesh uses everyday objects and materials to create murals that seem to jump off the wall to create images of psychic conflict and pain. Her site-specific work revolves around a multi-limbed, multi-eyed calendar-art goddess, painted in the style of commercial Bollywood posters. The figure is covered in beads, plastic–the ubiquitous furniture covering for new immigrants–fake hair and ethnic kitchen tools, reminiscent of the mythological comic books she grew up on.
Most of the artists represented are under 35 and 70 percent of them–as well as the exhibit’s three curators–are women. That makes for a refreshing perspective. One theme explored over and over again is the individual versus the collective; Jean Shin gathered 75 used sweaters from the Asian-American art community for her installation. She deconstructed each sweater by unraveling it, then researched who in the community was connected to whom and mapped their relationships through the intertwining yarn. The result is a work of crisscrossing strands that drape around columns and hang from walls to create a netlike web–a metaphor for community. For performance artist Xavier Cha, the individual is subsumed not into the collective but in the work itself: she fills a giant wicker “Horn of Plenty” with shiny colorful fruits and vegetables–and for the opening, buried herself under the props so only her bare feet stuck out.
The artists also poignantly document Asia’s influence on American life. Californian Indigo Som photographed Chinese restaurants in the Deep South states of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee–places with small Asian populations. She found eateries that were, she says, “lonely and mysterious, in the middle of nowhere, that tell how Asians have impacted mainstream U.S. life–we’ve not been invisible. These mom-and-pop shops serve compromised Chinese food to young people who are looking for something different … to whom [it] feels like another country.”
And as every artist knows, foreignness is hardly necessary to create a sense of alienation. Videographer Laurel Nakadate directs her camera’s gaze at herself and the lonely, single, middle-aged men she picks up on the street and invites, literally, to play. “There is something about playing pretend that is secret and sexy and lonely and at times a little dangerous,” she says. But if “One Way or Another” is any indication, Asian-American artists certainly don’t need to play pretend. They have found the real thing.
