Staying in, writes [Summer Kim] Lee, “critiques the compulsory sociability and relatability demanded of minoritarian subjects to go out, come out, and be out.” To stay in isn’t to cut off relations with others but only to refuse to be relatable – that is, to act in ways that conform to the standards and values of an outside public. For Asian Americans, to stay in means to slip out of our assigned roles within a visibility predicated on binaries of injury and protest, trauma and resilience – as entrenched as ever in our era of anti-Asian hate. Staying in opens up other registers of sociality: of rest, pleasure, play. It encapsulates the banal, domestic, familial spaces and relations that make up the substance of our lives but leave little trace in history – “The Possibility of Home” by Xueli Wang in Being & Becoming Asian in America, Aperture 251.
Michael Famighetti and Stephanie Hueon Tung (eds). Being & Becoming: Asian in America: Aperture. 251, summer 2023. New York: Aperture Foundation, 2023.
This book exhibition explores the fluctuating notion of “Asian identity” with the home as the focal point. The movement of contemporary queer Asian photography has become more than just a conversation, but rather its own language that is still being built. It is a language that artists use to express what was previously unexplainable, or maybe even unquestioned. Borrowing from (in)-directions: queerness in chinese contemporary photography, “queerness” in this context is about resisting definitions.
From the series In the Raw by Geraldine Kang — Tåokyåo-to Shashin Bijutsukan. I know something about love: Asian contemporary photography. Tokyo: Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2018.
“To use an image is to enter fiction,” said Trinh T. Minh Ha. Somewhere between reality and fantasy, these works question the sometimes absurd confines of identity through playful inventions into observable events and relationships.
By focusing on the interior world, I am inspired by how the works in this exhibition begin to address the complicated definition of home. Is home where our families are? Is home a space we create for ourselves to belong? The feeling of home in photography is universal and at the same time contentious. Instead of attempting to find an answer, these works subvert the question – as well as the possibility of the Western gaze – to assert that the home is just an extension of self, and therefore it is deeply complicated and always changing.
Liao, Pixy. Experimental Relationship: Vol 1. (2007-2017). China: Jiazazhi Press/Library, 2018.
By interrogating home life as a performance, we begin to excavate from the banal details and see why we do what we do. In my own work, I explore these questions using the kitchen as the center of the home, and unpacking rituals around food. By questioning rituals, we can find answers to what aspects of traditions we carry on and what we redefine and make our own.
Nguyen, Anh. The Kitchen God Tasting Menu. Brooklyn: Self published, 2024.
Monsters & Madonnas 