Think!Chinatown is pleased to present Art Across Archives, an exhibition that 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 America.
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 both travels and evolves.
The Epoxy Art Group’s core members included
Ming Fay (b. 1943),
Jerry Kwan (1934-2008),
Kwok Mang Ho (b. 1947),
Bing Lee (b. 1948), 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.
As part of Art Across Archives, there will be a community day on Sunday, March 18, 2018, with a curator-led tour of the exhibition.
About the Curator
Stephanie H. Tung is an art historian and curator of modern and contemporary Chinese art. She is a contributing author to Ai Weiwei: New York 1983-1993 (Three Shadows Press and Chambers Fine Art, 2010), The Chinese Photobook (Aperture, 2015), and Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2017). Her writing has also appeared in Yishu, Aperture, and the TransAsia Photography Review. She earned her BA from Harvard University and is completing her PhD at Princeton University.
About the Space
384 Broadway is a temporary art space presented by THINK!CHINATOWN and Chashama. With the mission to increase representation of Asian American artists and themes of concern to our community, this project seeks to test new ways galleries in Chinatown can better engage the neighborhood with cross-cultural and inter-generational practices. This project is not a commercial endeavor and is largely run on the energy of community volunteers.
THINK!CHINATOWN is a collective of neighbors and advocates working to keep Chinatown a vibrant place of inter-generational learning, cultural production & civic engagement. We are here to listen, to respond, and to build Chinatown’s capacities as a strong immigrant neighborhood of NYC. Our mission is to attract & connect resources for Chinatown organizations & businesses using the tools of design & community engagement. Join us in connecting past, present & future to ensure a resilient Chinatown.
Thank you to Tsingtao Beer for sponsoring the opening reception.
