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THE ART SCENE

[[Image]] KEN CHU, I NEED SOME MORE HAIR PRODUCTS 1988 

peace with their new identities. A kimono bursting into flames, a wry interpretation of the green card, a house on wheels going nowhere; these are just some of the translations of the search for identity by Asian artists in an innovative exhibition of contemporary art at the Asia Society in New York.
     'Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art' which can be seen from February 16 to June 26 1994, highlights the work of 20 foreign-born visual artists from China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. As the curators note in the special catalogue:
     "These artists have turned to their art to explore a complex sense of identity informed as much by a contemporary Asian background as by an evolving affiliation with the West.
     "In articulating the challenges and rewards involved in leaving their homelands and living in a society where influences from around the world converge, the artists employ approaches that range from invoking intensely personal experiences to assuming the role of a distanced observer. In doing so, they underscore the increasingly fluid and hybrid nature of relationships between Asia and America, and between Asian and people of Asian descent in expanding communities around the world. Moreover, by contributing to a plural discourse in a nation that is fast becoming the first fully multicultural society on earth, they will, as with every wave immigration, redefine what it is to be American."
     Although each Asian country has its own clearcut identity, it's interesting that all of them do share certain qualities – duty and honor, family ties, an attachment to the past. Here are some vignettes from the exhibition catalogue, placing under a microscope the works of art by these Asian artists. A visit to the Asia Society Galleries is a must to realize that the feelings of alienation, nostalgia for the homeland, and loneliness expressed by these artists in their work are universal to all immigrants.

     Some Excerpts:
     *"I am no longer Japanese but not American either," says Mitsuo Toshida. Raised in a society emphasizing social harmony and strong group identification, Mitsuo Toshida found himself unprepared to function in the very different culture of America. His experience of estrangement and incomprehension at a time when he most wanted to fit in made him uneasy for years afterwards, compelling him to use his art to address the psychic disruption he initially endured in the United States. Later, when he felt more integrated into this country, he began to critically reexamine the land of his birth and came to realize that it was not the unitary culture he had once thought, but, like other nations, a society rife with conflict and fragmentation.
     In 'Labyrinth of Solitude' (Acrylic, graphite, and colored marker on paper), to make visible his distress and loneliness in a society that initially seemed unfathomable, the artist pairs a maze-like grid with images of the Frankenstein monster, a reference to a fictional creature - inspired by American movies remembered from childhood - that was misjudged in its clumsy first efforts to reach out to the strangers it encountered after escaping from its creator.
     *"Because everyone calls you Korean you try to figure out what that means by digging all the way back to early mythology and linking that to today," says Y. David Chung. Like many Korean immigrants, he finds that his thoughts often fluctuate between memories of Korea and life in the United

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LITTLE INDIA MARCH 1994