Upcoming Events
Asian American Resistance & Creative Clapbacks in the time of COVID-19 (Frances Kai-Hwa Wang)
The BU Center for the Study of Asia is pleased to present
with Frances Kai-Hwa Wang
The history of Asian America is a history of resistance. And Art. We will look at moments in history and how Asian Americans have resisted and used art, including the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Vincent Chin case in 1982, and after 9/11. We will look at how Asian Americans are using art today in this time of COVID-19 to both share their talents and to clap back at anti-Asian American violence. And then we will think about what you can do to help the community during this time.
Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a journalist, essayist, speaker, and poet focused on issues of diversity, race, culture, and the arts. Her writing has appeared at NBC News Asian America, PRI Global Nation, Cha Asian Literary Journal. She teaches Asian/Pacific Islander American media and civil rights at the University of Michigan. She co-created a multimedia artwork for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. She is a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge Detroit artist, Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellow on Poverty, and Keith Center for Civil Rights Detroit Equity Action Lab Race and Justice Reporting Fellow on the Arts. franceskaihwawang.com @
Rethinking Kyoto Tourism with Dr. Jennifer Prough
The BU History of Art & Architecture Department and BU Center for the Study of Asia are pleased to present:
Rethinking Kyoto Tourism
with Dr. Jennifer Prough
(Valparaiso University)
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Prough
Dr. Jennifer Prough, Associate Professor of Humanities and East Asian Studies at Valparaiso University speaks with Alice Y. Tseng, Professor of Japanese Art and Architecture at Boston University on Prough’s research on Kyoto’s contemporary tourism industry. She reassesses Kyoto as a unique destination, and the ways that this historical capital’s long heritage is mobilized for cultural agendas, social purposes, and economic strategies. Current issues and challenges caused by overtourism, globalization, and the COVID-19 pandemic are also discussed.
Boston Asian American Film Festival (Free online screening June 27, 2020)
2020 SHORT WAVES: STORIES SHAPING OUR COMMUNITY
ABOUT SHORT WAVES
Short Waves: Stories Shaping Our Community is BAAFF's screening of short videos in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May. The screening featured shorts collected from the Open Call. The top submissions were selected by a panel of distinguished judges at the event. The winner was determined by public vote of the finalists. The winner of the Short Waves Competition received automatic acceptance into the upcoming Boston Asian American Film Festival.
Asian Pacific Americans have long been making waves in all aspects of American life, but their stories have often been lost in general U.S. discourse. “Short Waves: Stories Shaping Our Community,” hopes to bring light to these stories through locally made, community driven short films about the Asian American experience and community.
FREE ONLINE SCREENING
Saturday, June 27, 2020 | 6:30PM
Pao Arts Center - 99 Albany St. (Chinatown) Boston, MA 02111
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Up to 5-minute video to share your story about your Asian American life or community based on a personal experience.*Deadline: Sunday, June 7th, 11:59 pm
Short Waves winner benefits include:
- Sharing your story with the community
- Automatic acceptance into the upcoming BAAFF
- Network with other featured filmmakers & participate in Q&As
- 2020 VIP Festival Pass
Some sample topics may include:
- What Asian American issue are you most passionate about?
- Tell us about someone who has helped shaped your identity as an Asian American. (role model)
- What is a pressing issue that affects your Asian American community and how that affects you?
- How do you personally define your Asian American identity?
- How do you celebrate your Asian American identity? (family gatherings and rituals, etc.)
Questions? Please email baaff@aarw.org
*We reserve the right to refuse any submissions that we believe may be prohibited or inappropriate.
Feed your mind! Feast your eyes! Explore some exciting Asia-related museum exhibitions this fall! See a few suggestions below:
Preserved Pages: Book as Art in Persia and India, 1300–1800, at the Worcester Art Museum
Mark your calendars for the upcoming exhibition
Preserved Pages:
Book as Art in Persia and India, 1300–1800
October 13, 2018 – January 6, 2019
at the Worcester Art Museum
55 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA 01609 508.799.4406
This exhibition focuses on works on paper, separated from books (manuscripts) and albums, from the Worcester Art Museum's collection. Representing the two main contexts for the image in Iran and India from the Mongol invasions of the mid-1200s through the pre-modern period, Preserved Pages highlights several important artworks. These include landmark manuscripts, such as the 14th-century Great Mongol Shahnama (Book of Kings), and other rarely seen treasures of the Museum's Islamic art collection. Exhibition themes focus on the broad diversity of the arts of the book; the cultural and artistic value of art and literature; the variety of texts, genres, and modes of pictorial illustration and enhancement; and the subject matter and mediums developed by artists (painting, drawing, and illumination).
Image: Persian, An Irate Camel, (detail), 17th Century, opaque watercolor on paper,
Bequest of Alexander H. Bullock, 1962.185
Last Defense: The Genius of Japanese Meiji Metalwork, at the Worcester Art Museum
Now on exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum:
Last Defense:
The Genius of Japanese Meiji Metalwork
September 13, 2017 - September 2, 2018 at the Worcester Art Museum
55 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA 01609 508.799.4406
http://www.worcesterart.org/exhibitions/last-defense-japanese-metalwork/
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), the political revolution when power was restored to the emperor from the samurai class, this exhibition focuses on the genius and versatility of metalworkers during this transitional moment. With the decline of the samurai class and its privileges, armor-makers, such as the renowned four centuries-old Myochin family of metalworkers, applied their exemplary skills and artistry to develop new types of metal products, from toys to decorative art. This show will feature magnificent works from the Museum's Higgins collection, as well as a special selection of loans.
Top image: Nagasone Tojiro Mitsumasa, Helmet in the form of a Sea Conch Shell, 1618, iron with traces of lacquer, textiles, The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.89.1
Bottom image: Kozan, Articulated “Jizai” Figurine of a Lobster, about 1900, iron, The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.609
PRESS
The Wall Street Journal
Creativity Forged Anew in Japan
By Lee Lawrence, January 8, 2018
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10,000 Miles Along the Yangzi River, at the MFA Boston
Visit the upcoming exhibition at the MFA:
10,000 Miles along the Yangzi River
July 21, 2018 – September 30, 2018
Asian Painting Gallery (Gallery 178)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/10000-miles-along-the-yangzi-river
Embark on a transcontinental journey in imperial China
This immersive installation takes visitors on a journey along the longest river in Asia through a masterpiece of Chinese painting. A favored court artist of the Kangxi Emperor, Wang Hui created 10,000 Miles along the Yangzi River—also known as Ten Thousand Li up the Yangtze River—over seven months following his release from imperial service. Wang Hui luxuriated in his newfound freedom, painting the 53-foot-long handscroll with virtuoso brushwork. Presented in the gallery with soundscapes of life on the river, the monumental piece depicts the length of the Yangzi (Yangtze) River and incorporates references to China’s great artistic and poetic traditions.
Over the centuries, 10,000 Miles along the Yangzi River has been passed down through generations of passionate connoisseurs. It was acquired by the high-ranking imperial official Weng Tonghe in the 19th century and today remains in the collection of his great-grandson Wan-go H. C. Weng. Weng Tonghe inscribed the work with a colophon—traditionally written by Chinese collectors to express their appreciation for a painting—and, in honor of his 100th birthday, Wan-go H. C. Weng has recently composed his own. Explore the sophisticated brushwork, rich landscape imagery, and literary references of 10,000 Miles along the Yangzi River; discover the history of the painting; and capture your experience of viewing the work by writing a colophon in the gallery.
Sponsors
Presented with support from The June N. and John C. Robinson Fund for Chinese Paintings in Honor of Marjorie C. Nordblom, the Joel Alvord and Lisa Schmid Alvord Fund, and the Rodger and Dawn Nordblom Fund for Chinese Paintings in Honor of Marjorie C. Nordblom.
Amirhossein Bayani: Out of Context. Exhibition opening reception July 6, 2018 at Ars Libri, Boston
Opening reception for the new exhibit
Amirhossein Bayani: Out of Context
Friday, July 6, 2018 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm
at Ars Libri, 500 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02118
www.arslibri.com
617 357-5212
Out of Context
"With an utterly critical approach, the series deals with politics of power, considering how it empties the subjects of their essence, and how it manipulates reality. After studying various elements in Persian miniatures, which generally depend on different contexts, I have taken these blown-up figures out of their contexts, filling them up with new aesthetics and with what formerly existed outside of them. Lost and bewildered, they live in white contexts on the walls, which they don’t belong. The series aims at capturing the essence of art in a paradoxical fashion, keeping possibilities for emancipation in perspective." From https://curiator.com/art/amirhossein-bayani/out-of-context-12
OUT OF CONTEXT
As described by the artist, AMIRHOSSEIN BAYANI
"The series deals with politics. Not politics of emancipation, but power politics. With an utterly critical approach, it is trying to confront the part of politics that is zeroing in on the entirety of human existence and is trying hard to annihilate it. It is as if we are facing the mere fact which directs all the ways towards economic globalization and art globalization. It goes without saying to considering this issue exhaustively in a single series is impossible. Thus, it is focusing on how the subject is colonized by the politics of power. It talks about the part in which the politics of power acts subtly with violence and with a fashionable appearance! , emptying the subjects of their substance, changing identities, perpetually attacking the organic unity of subjects, taking care of everything, repeatedly manipulating the reality, advertising it, and finally making them authentic so much so that any critical approach would be immediately accused of being reactionary and recessive: an intricate mechanism that owes its very existence to creating crisis.
Persian forms are pictures in tiny scales, with disorderly compositions, that generally make a unique, unified experience for the viewer. Commonly, they narrate a story that exists outside of them: they depend on a different context. They are very gentle and poetic, even when they narrate the most violent scenes; according to their different eras, they have their particular stylistic characteristics. The elements are generally idealized, they emphasize details, and they have their own perspective. We can go on talking and doing research about Persian images for years.
In this series, I have considered all the elements of Persian images, except their nature. In the first stage of using violence, I have cut out a piece out of them and have taken them out of their context. Then I have blown them up, much larger than their original size, which is to say I have aggrandized them, it is as if we are seeing microscopic images! It is as if they are being zoomed in. It is as if they are control samples. In the next stage, I realized that the aesthetic inside them is not enough, so I decided to bring in a new kind of aesthetic. I poured their surrounding nature, which was working properly as context for the figures’ initial conditions, into them and I even gave them ideas! I even changed the material of technical approach and led the technical part to a direction that I wanted.
What we eventually see is only reminiscent of Persian painting, and they are even more seductive and apparently self-contained. But they are in fact new subjects emptied of their essence. Lost and bewildered, they live in white contexts on the walls to which they do not belong.
This show is aimed at capturing the essence of art in a paradoxical manner in order to establish a dialogue between the aesthetics of art and potential emancipation latent in politics and to admit standing within the circle of power while keeping possibilities for emancipation in perspective."
--Amirhossein Bayani (From http://mohsen.gallery/artists/series/2016/out-of-context-2/)
About the Artist:
Amirhossein Bayani
Born in 1977
Artist, Curator, and University Professor
Education
2004 M.A. in Art Research, Art & Architecture Faculty of Azad Art University
2000 B.A. in Painting, University of Art, Tehran
Visual Art Diploma, IRIB Art School
Some Activities
2011 Founder and Art Director at MERXOUT Projects
2013 Member of Artraker winners
Member of Iranian Painters Society
Member of Institute for Promotion of Visual Arts
Member of electorate committee of Radio & Television College
Founder of Tehran Art Group
Curating Experiences
2014 Salvation Gaza, Niavaran Complex, Tehran, Iran
2013 MERXOUT Projects, Open Source, Shirin Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2012 MERXOUT Projects, OCCUPY ME! (Dedicated to RADIOHEAD), Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2011 Pool, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2010 In Honour of 68, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
Solo Exhibitions
2016 “Out of Context”, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2013 Babylon System, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2010 What was happened to the women in shahnameh? , Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2009 Brides of Our Time, Etemad Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2006 Eyes’ wide shot, Azad art gallery, Tehran, Iran
International Group Exhibitions
2017 “Shadow of Garden”, Stiftelsen 3,14 Gallery , Bergen, Norway
2013 Artraker, Babylon System (top 3 selected by Jury), London, UK
2013 Babylon System (Video), Goldsmiths University, London, UK
2013 Facade Video Festival, Message from Iran (top 10 selected by the jury), Plovdiv, Bulgaria
2013 Down street Art, Massachusetts, the USA
2013 SOMART, Speak Your Peace
2012 The 5th Beijing International Art Biennale, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China
2011 Contemporary Istanbul, International Art Fai, Istanbul, Turkey
2011 BERLINER LISTE, International Art Fair, Berlin, Germany
2010 The 4th Beijing International Art Biennale, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China
2008 Group painting exhibition, Heaven on Earth Now, The Brick Lane Gallery, London, UK
2007 CAREVAN, Shiraz art gallery, Venice, Italy
2007 Group painting exhibition with Iranian contemporary artists, Dar-All-Fonoon art gallery, Kuwait
2007 Painting exhibition with Iranian contemporary artists, Assar Art Gallery
Group Exhibitions
2017 “Postcards”, Azad Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2017 “Trends and Approaches in Contemporary Iranian Art”, Pardis Mellat Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2016 Shahnameh, the Perpetual Narrative, Curator: Akram Tavana , Arran Art Gallery
2014 Zoo, Shirin Art Gallery
2014 A Review of decade of Video Art in Iran, Iranian Artists Forum
2013 “History Game”, Etemad Gallery
2013 Group Exhibition Titled: Shahnameh FerdowsiI, Curator: Reza Hedayat Laleh Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2012 Mesociety Tehran Workshop, a Hydro city Project
2011 13X18 PORTRAIT, Etemad Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2010 Performance Box Curatorship, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2010 “To Paint Cinema”, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2010 Obligatory Military Service, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2010 Second Memorial of Professor Freidoon Mam Beigi, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2010 Drawing exhibition with Iranian contemporary artists, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2008 First Memorial of Professor Freidoon Mam Beigi, Azad Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran
Art Fair
2014 ART14 LONDON, International Art Fair, London, UK
2011 BERLINER LISTE International Art Fair, Berlin, Germany
2011 Contemporary Istanbul International Art Fair, Istanbul, Turkey
Corky White and Debra Samuels co-curate “Objects of Use and Beauty: Design and Craft in Japanese Culinary Tools”
Now on exhibit at the Fuller Craft Museum, 455 Oak Street, Brockton, MA
Objects of Use and Beauty: Design and Craft in Japanese Culinary Tools
June 2, 2018 - October 28, 2018
Objects of Use and Beauty: Design and Craft in Japanese Culinary Tools demonstrates the beauty of design and use in Japanese cooking and reveal the artistry of craftsmanship in such tools as knives, whisks, ceramic kama, and other important items. The use of materials such as bamboo, clay, cedar wood, metals and other natural substances is accompanied by contemporary materials in contemporary designs. Videos of craftspeople at work in their studios and forges are included, as well as the tools themselves and narratives concerning their use. In addition, the exhibition provides a glimpse at a Japanese home kitchen and videos demonstrating the making of Japanese foods.
Co-Curators: Debra Samuels and Merry White
Sponsored by the Caroline R. Graboys Fund, the Japan World Exposition 1970 Commemorative Fund, and The Japan Foundation, New York.
The exhibition catalogue is available here.
Harvard Fairbank Center Gender Studies Workshop: Gender and Friendship in China. May 4, 2018
Gender Studies Workshop: Gender and Friendship in China
Sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
May 4, 2018 12:45-5:30 pm at CGIS South Room S354, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA 02138
For full details, see http://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/gender-studies-workshop-gender-and-friendship-in-china/
Program:
12:45-1 p.m. Welcoming remarks
First Panel
Moderator: Wai-yee Li, Harvard University
1-1:30p.m. Zhou Yiqun, Stanford University: “Hermits and Their Wives in Early Chinese Texts”
1:30-2p.m. Hu Ying, University of California Irvine: “Strange Friends: Reconceptualizing Gender and Community”
2-2:30p.m. Ellen Widmer, Wellesley College: “Intercultural Mutuality: Mary Hannah Fulton (1854-1927) and Zhang Jujun (1879-1964)”
2:30-3p.m. Discussion
3-3:30p.m. Break
Second Panel
Moderator: Xu Man, Tufts University
3:30-4p.m. Haiyan Lee, Stanford University: “‘Now We Have a Baby’: A Very Short Genealogy of the Pure Relationship in Chinese Literature”
4-4:30p.m. Catherine Vance Yeh, Boston University: “Friendship in the Staging of a Star: Mei Lanfang”
4:30-5p.m. Eileen Chow, Duke University: “‘有沒有愛？’：Tongren Culture, Fandom and ‘Benefits with Friendship’”
5-5:30p.m. Discussion