Diasporic roots, new futures in show
In the latest show to take over SOMArt Cultural Center’s main gallery, a series of masks hangs on one wall. At the center is a piece called “nüwafuxi.” This mask, created by the artist missTANGQ, seeks to reimagine — or, as the artist puts it, “re-myth” — an ancient Chinese creation story by unifying the “the brother-sister/ husband-wife pair” of Nüwa and Fuxi into a single, queer spiritual entity.
The piece is a perfect touchstone for the show as a whole, which offers artists a chance to mine their cultural traditions, spiritual lineages and diverse ancestries and make them their own. The exhibition, “Diasporic Alchemy,” on display through April 5, was co-curated by missTANGQ and Louis Chinn, both Chinese American artists, as part of the center’s ongoing curatorial residency program.
“I’ve always felt like being of the diaspora is like having a superpower in that you get to exist in multiple realities and multiple spaces at the same time,” missTANGQ says. “And I’ve always been really interested in artists who are interested in exploring that.”
For their show, the curators have decided to keep the space completely open, eschewing any sort of dividing walls, while placing an emphasis on largescale, multimedia pieces. All of the artists address their own experience with their specific diaspora. Hulking beings, right out of a dreamscape, pose in one corner, while a 30-foot-long body reclines on its side, a representation of “the higher self or sleeping Buddha inside of us, waiting to be awakened.” On another wall, magic shields made of ginkgo leaves, bamboo leaves, lavender flowers and other materials offer protection in a modern world.
The theme, says Chinn, was a “pretty natural evolution” for the two curators. “Our community of artist friends — and the artists that inspire us as well — are part of the diverse cultural, global fabric of the Bay Area.”