Art Across Archives Opening
- Venue: Think!Chinatown’s Community Art Space
- Address:
384 Broadway
New York, NY United States - Website: View Venue Website
Produced by Think!Chinatown in collaboration with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Asia Art Archive in America, Asian American Arts Centre, and chashama.
Curated by Stephanie H. Tung
Featuring the work of Ming Fay and the Epoxy Art Group
Opening: Saturday, February 17, 2018 at 7:00 p.m.
On view: Saturday, February 17 – Saturday, March 31, 2018
Wednesday-Friday: 4:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday-Sunday: 12:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Window display visible 24/7
Art Across Archives re-constitutes the work of the EPOXY Art Group, a collective of artists hailing primarily from Hong Kong and China active in New York during the 1980s and ‘90s. The group experimented with a variety of art forms, including installation, performance, slideshows, and zines, as a collaborative means of exploring and re-framing their cross-cultural experiences in the US.
The featured works, The Decolonization of Hong Kong (1992) and Thirty-Six Tactics (1987), are examples of a research-based approach to art-making. The artists sifted through mass media archives and used Xerox machines to compile their own unofficial histories of global events. Drawing upon resources as disparate as Reagan Era scandals, the Opium Wars, and classical Chinese military stratagems, these artworks piece together far-flung fragments of a world that has already happened. Traversing time and space, they gesture toward a past that both travels and evolves.
The Epoxy Art Group’s core members included Ming Fay (b. 1943), Bing Lee (b. 1948), Jerry Kwan (1934-2008), Kwok Mang Ho (b. 1947), Kang Lok Chung (b. 1947), and Eric Chan (b. 1975), with Esther Liu, and Cissy Pao (b. 1950), Andrew Culver (b. 1953), and Zhang Hongtu (b. 1943) as additional participants. The exhibit includes an archival wall with modules addressing Epoxy’s work as a collaborative group, the significance of downtown New York to their work, and the slideshow as an innovative, hand-drawn medium.
Art Across Archives draws material from three New York collections: the Asian American Arts Centre, the Asia Art Archive in America, and selections by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU of materials from the Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU. Slideshows featuring each collection will be on view 24/7 in the window of 384 Broadway and as a projection indoors. In opening up these archives to fresh perspectives, this exhibition asks us to rethink the archive as a space for play and a source for new ideas in the community.
Image: Ming Fay / Epoxy Art Group. From the series, The Decolonization of Hong Kong (1992). Courtesy of the artist and Asia Art Archive in America.