Beyond a Politics of Location: On Asian/American Art Workers and Art

Abstract

What makes art “Asian”? What makes art “American”? How can ethnic, racial, and national categories be utilized in the arts without becoming essentializing? Two collections, Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the Arts, edited by Christopher K. Ho and Daisy Nam, and American Art in Asia: Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence, edited by Michelle Lim and Kyunghee Pyun, confront these questions head on. Beyond a cursory overview of the ways in which one’s racial or ethnic identity and national allegiances impact art workers, these collections complicate existing labels that place art and its creators strictly within the boundaries of existing frameworks within fields spanning art history, ethnic studies, and area studies. To begin, both collections’ editors write on the centrality of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which hastened their projects into reality. The seeds of Ho and Nam’s Best! were planted in early 2020. With an open premise, they put forward a call for letters from Asian American cultural workers to “explore their Asian American identity in relationship to their practice, their upbringing, their place in the world, and their aspirations for the future” resulting in seventy-three letters of varied nature from artists, curators, professors, and others in the field (2). With this large number of contributions, the collection brings varied perspectives to the fore. And, with open-ended prompting questions provided to the writers, the content may be overwhelming at first glance. Still though each letter ranges in form and length, there are familiar kernels embedded in each: themes of diasporic identity, belonging, and intergenerational legacies which tie seemingly disparate contributions together. Published by Paper Monument, a nonprofit art press based in Brooklyn, Best! finds a home alongside texts which encourage critical thought from and for artists. Choosing to intimately tackle questions of