please read the article and write: 1 what I know when I see the title of the artle 2 what I want to learn from this article 3 what I learn from this article this essay should be at least 300 words. the essay is in the item.

Edited by Melissa Chiu

Karin Higa Susette S. Min

With essays by Margo Machida

Helen Zia

With contributions by Atteqa Ali

K6an Jeff Baysa Aimee Chang

Doryun Chong Tim Davis

Reena Jan a Miwako Tezuka Christina Yang

Asia Society in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Published on the occasion of "One

Way or Another: Asian American Art

Now," on exhibition organized by

the Asia Society, New York

Asia Society and Museum, New York

September 8-December 1 0, 2006

Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the

University of Houston

January 20-March 31 , 2007

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film

Archive, University of California

September 19-December 23, 2007

Japanese American National Museum,

Los Angeles

February 9-May 2, 2008

© 2006 Asia Society

New York, New York

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by

Asia Society

725 Park Avenue

New York, NY 1 0021

C>Asia1se . "'"""""' Soctety '""'-'oo" Distributed by

Yale University Press

P.O. Box 209040

302 Temple Street

New Haven, CT 06520·9040

www.yalebooks.com

ISBN-1 o, 0-300-12059-1 ISBN- n 978-0-300-12059-2

Library of Congress Control Number:

2006930702

Curators: Melissa Chiu, Karin Higa, Susette S. Min

Assistant Curator: Miwako Tezuka

Project Manager: Marion Kocot

Designer: Miko McGinty, assisted by Rita Jules

Copyeditor: Mary Chou

Printer: Friesens Corporation

The exhibition and publication are made possible with

generous support from our lead sponsor Altria Group, Inc.

Altria

Additional support for the exhibition is provided by the W.LS. Spencer Foundation,

Nimoy Foundation, and Asia Society's Contemporary Art Council.

m~ Clttgroupj

Cover illustration: Mike Tajima, Gross Grows Forever in Every Possible Direction

(video still), 2004. Fabric, photo print, tape, amps, guitars, fluorescent lights, video

projection, performance. Dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. Photograph

by Miko Tajima, courtesy of the artist.

PRINTED IN CANADA

Table of Contents

Preface Melissa Chiu 6

Introduction Melissa Chiu, Karin Higa, and Susette S. Min 8

Asian American: An Evolving Consciousness Helen Zia 10

Reframing Asian America Margo Mach ida 15

Origin Myths: A Short and Incomplete History of Godzilla Karin Higa 21

A Conversation on Today's Asian America Melissa Chiu 26

The Last Asian American Exhibition in the Whole Entire World Susette S. Min 34

Artist Entries 42

Select Bibliography 126

10

ASIAN AMERICAN: AN EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS

Helen Zia

There was once a time, not long ago, when "Asian Americans" did not exist. The very idea of Asians who could be American was inconceivable-indeed, repugnant-to politicians, pundits, and the public at large. This, in spite of Spanish chronicles from the early seventeenth century about established communities of Chinese in

North America, or the Pacific migrations from Asia and Polynesia

which anthropologists dote back to many thousands of years. But since the reality of Pacific crossings from Asia and the Pacific Islands

didn't match a master narrative invested in the Atlantic, the stories of those early Asian migrants have been largely ignored, even deliberately repressed, and rendered missing in history.

The inability to conceptualize "Asian Americans" continued until

1968, when young activists on the campuses at San Francisco State

University and the University of California, Berkeley named them- selves, proclaiming their existence to the world. They recognized that the act of defining themselves as Asian Americans was revolu-

tionary, emblematic of the radical movement that sent young activists

into Chinatowns, liHie Tokyos, and other communities where they

created storefront nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations-

some remain today as established community institutions (fig. 1 ). It's no

wonder that the first wave of Asian American art as part of that decla-

ration was bold and brash, a conscious statement of self-determination

intended to break through the years of imposed invisibility. Since that historical proclamation of Pan-Asian ness, much has

been wriHen on the limitations of lumping all the peoples and cultures

of Asia in America into one clumsy category.

Some argue that the more natural or authentic affinity is through

ethnicity, immigrant or refugee status, class, generation, language,

or other cultural markings. Others reject this umbrella grouping

altogether, on the grounds that this unwieldy combination is a mod-

ern device of political expediency.

There is merit to such critiques, but the lumping-together process

began far before those Yellow Power activists, harking back to the horse-and-buggy days, when the only people granted full person- hood were those who came from across the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Those whose roots pointed toward the Pacific Ocean were simply

"Orientals," "Asiatics," "Mongoloids," or worse. Even though their

lives were centered on this continent, they could never aHa in "Amer-

ican" status when federal law prohibited anyone of Asian ancestry

from becoming American.

Fig. 1 linoleum block print of Pot Sumi, one of the political leaders of the Asian American

movement, by Salehi Kawahara, 14 x 1 1

inches. Printed on the cover of Radon, an Asian American movement newspaper pub-

lished in San Francisco, November 1970 issue.

A very few Asian immigrants managed to become U.S. citizens before the exclusion laws were enacted. Yet they continued to be viewed as perpetual foreigners and when the anti-Asian federal laws were enacted, they were "denaturalized"-stripped of their citizen-

ships and denaturalized retroactively. Singled out in this way, "Ori- entals" became the first "illegal aliens" of the United States; mobs of white "real Americans" used violence to rid the United States of any Asians during that terrible "driving out" time. The population

of Asians in the United States fell dramatically. Enfranchisement and participation in this democracy was inhibited until 1952, when the last of the nineteenth-century exclusion laws were finally repealed. Even in Hawaii, the Asian and Pacific Islander maiority, which has

had to contend with more than 100 years of genocide, colonial occupation, plantation economy, and exclusion had no access to political representation until 1959, when if received statehood.

Until the Asian American movement came roaring into the 1960s,

Americans of Asian ancestry held a perpetual alien status for cen- turies, which relegated them to the fringes of society and subjected

them to racist hate-mongering and threats of violence. To survive, some Asian Americans adopted the defensive posture of the colo- nized as a means of survival in a hostile environment, choosing the path of invisibility and not "making waves," hoping to stay under the radar of racism. Even today, some people believe that Asian peoples and cultures are by nature passive, docile, and apolitical- a notion easily countered by pointing to the rich history of vocal political resistance in Asia. Yet even in the presence of blatant racism, these early Asian Americans raised families, resisted their

persecutors in the courts and on the streets, and created distinct communities, institutions, and cultures. They made lives in the United States in spite of being forced into the shadows by a society that nakedly and intentionally denied their full personhood.

When the various federal exclusion laws against immigrants from Asia were finally repealed, the 1952 U.S. Census reported only 500,000 Asian Americans living in the entire country-less than one-tenth of one percent of the American population. With most Asians and Pacific Islanders concentrated in urban ghettoes, ethnic enclaves, and the islands of Hawaii, they were virtually invisible in mainstream America. Then, beginning in the mid-1960s, a series of monumental events set in motion changes that altered the country- and transformed Asian America.

The first tectonic shift came with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed the race-based immi- gration restrictions that had kept Asian migration to a trickle even as European migrants came pouring in. The new law struck down the old policy of limiting immigrants from the "colored" countries

to a hundred or fewer people per year. In contrast, the 1965 immi- gration policy stressed family reunification, with preference accorded to immediate relatives of current U.S. citizens. The motiva- tion behind this approach was a direct result of the civil rights era, which exposed the bias of the old quota system and turned it into a

source of international embarrassment for the United States. As Rep- resentative Philip Burton (D-CA) said in Congress in 1965, "Just as we sought to eliminate discrimination in our land through the Civil Rights Act, today we seek by phasing out the national origins quota system to eliminate discrimination in immigration to this nation composed of the descendants of immigrants." 1

Yet no one, not even the law's advocates, anticipated the subse-

quent sea change; indeed, most tried to downplay any potential demographic impact. Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chair Edward Kennedy (D-MA) reasoned, "First, our cities will not be flooded with

a million immigrants annually .... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset .... [rhe bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated

and deprived nations of Africa and Asia."' As he signed the bill at the foot of the Statue of liberty, President lyndon Johnson said, "This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives."3

When asked in 1965 about possible immigration from Indio, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, "The present estimate, based upon the best information we can get, is that there might be, say, 8,000 immigrants from India in the next five years."A Senator Hiram

Fang (D-HI), asked a similar question about an influx from Asians, replied, "Asians represent six-tenths of 1 percent of the population

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of the United Stoles ... The people from that part of the world will never reach 1 percent of the population ... Our cultural pattern will never be changed as far as America is concerned." 5

We can now look back in amazement at how massively wrong

they were. In the first five years after the law's enactment, 27,859 Indian immigrants arrived and their numbers continued to increase, so that by 1993, immigrants from India totaled 558,980. In 1960,

the census counted 877,934 Asian Americans; by 1970, the num- bers had doubled to 1.4 million. By 1980 the numbers doubled again from the last census to 3.4 million-well beyond the one per- cent mark predicted by Senator Fong. In the 1990 census, there was another doubling to 7.2 million as Asian Americans were des~

ignated the fastest growing minority group. Today, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders exceed 14 million, more than 4 percent of the

U.S. population, a far cry from the days of invisibility, when the population was not even six-tenths of one percent.

The stunning population growth did not all flow from the 1965 immigration act. The end of the U.S. war in Vietnam in 1973 brought nearly 1 million refugees from Vietnam. Continued turmoil and wa:-fare in the region turned Cambodians, lao, Hmong, Mien, and others into refugees as well. Congress passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 and then the

Refugee Act of 1980, adopting the broader United Nations definition of refugee status and creating a separate admissions policy for refugees. Another law, the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987,

brought about 100,000 Amerasian children-the offspring of Amer- ican Gls-and their Southeast Asian mothers to the United States. All

told, more than one million Southeast Asians came to United States after 1975. After the Tienanmen Square crackdown in China, tens of thousands of Chinese political refugees were admitted. In addi-

tion, the numbers of international adoptions from Korea continued to grow, with more than 100,000 children adopted since the end of the Korean War in 1954. These events are part of the global amal- gam that forms the collective experience of the post-1965 generations.

It is impossible to overstate the impact that the combined influx of the new immigrants and refugees had on the nation as a whole and Asian Americans in particular. The shift from 877,934 in 1960 to over 14 million today has been a transformation of immense magni- tude. At first the changes were subtle, almost imperceptible. Many of the new Asian Americans were absorbed info the vast suburban landscape, especially those professionals with the advanced degrees and skills preferred by the new immigration policies, while

the resettlement policies governing the refugees emphasized disper-

sal throughout the United States, often to rural communities or poor urban neighborhoods.

Perhaps the first visible signs of change were the restaurants, shops, and signage of the new immigrants: chaat and pho, sushi

and kimchee, pad thai and lumpia, nail parlors, donut shops, gas stations, motels. For example, in 1971, a tiny Chinese restaurant simply named "A Kitchen" opened at a gas station in the New Jer- sey hinterlands. The fact that it shunned chop suey fare and instead

served a far less familiar Beijing-style cuisine created such a stir that the New York Times reported on it and droves of New Yorkers made the long trek to Princeton to stand in line for one of the thirty-

two seats. The impact on other Chinese Americans, who came from far and wide to have an authentic down-home restaurant meal, not altered for lofan tastes, was electrifying. Few of those diners in search of a novel cuisine could have imagined they were witnesses to the demographic revolution in progress.

Less benign flash points were inevitable when refugees and immigrants unfamiliar with U.S. culture, language, or people

located or were placed in monochromatic communities where Asian Americans of any stripe were rare sightings. A report by the Massachusetts Attorney General's Civil Rights Division in 1983 noted numerous racially motivated assaults against Southeast Asian

refugees; "Often, [they] cannot even walk along the public streets without being physically attacked and threatened because of their race or national origin."6

Just as the civil rights movement gave rise to such bold legisla- tion as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, so it inspired the Yellow Power activists who gave Asian Americans a name. The convergence of these development~-the blossoming of an Asian American consciousness, the building of an Asian American infra- structure, and the tremendous growth of an increasingly diverse population-set the stage for the dynamic formation of new commu- nities, organizations, institutions, and cultural forms to meet the

needs of the post-1965 migrants. Among them were visionary artists, poets, filmmakers, writers, dancers, actors, musicians, and others in every medium who, through creative expression, trans- lated the profound metamorphosis that enveloped our communities.

In New York, the Basement Workshop opened on East Broad-

way in the early 1970s, providing a locus for artists and their politi- cal expression through magazines, newspapers, poster art, and murals. Asian Cine Vision, Asian American Arts Alliance, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, and other institutions all sprang from this tremen- dous activist energy. A similar cultural revolution took hold in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Honolulu-wherever the Asian American spark found creative voices

waiting to ignite.

It is not surprising that so much of that art was outspoken,

politically daring, and in-your-face direct for anyone who might not get the message that "We're Asian, we're here, get used to it!" After centuries of having no name or other accoutrements of human- ity, Asian Americans were finally claiming ourselves, and there was no reason to make the declaration quietly.

Indeed, there were those in the "mainstream" of the United States who either could not comprehend or flat out rejected the

notion of an Asian American people-such as the white autoworkers who beat Vincent Chin to death in 1982 and the judge who freed them with a sentence of probation. Even the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the local Notional Lawyers Guild defended the judge's actions; they reasoned that Asian Americans

are not entitled to protection by civil rights laws because, firstly, Asians weren't in the United States when these laws were drafted in the 1860s (wrong!), and secondly, we do not experience racism or discrimination. The director of civil rights for the United Auto Work-

ers union even told a group of Asian American community activists that if Vincent Chin had been Japanese instead of Chinese, he would have deserved to be killed.'

Asian American artists of multiple media captured the story of Vincent Chin through songs, poetry, plays, sculpture, paintings, poster art, T-shirts, performance art, films, and dance. Singer/ performer Charlie Chin, singer/law professor Chris lijima, ploy- wright Cherylene lee, artist Nancy Hom, documentary filmmakers

Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peiia, composer and pianist Jon Jang, as well as latina sculptor Consuela Echeverria and T-shirt designer Blacklava-these are but a few of the noted artists who have created works on this single incident (fig. 2). Their subject, by

its very nature, is overtly political and intended to wake people up to the possibility of Americans of Asian descent.

Even as the dynamic evolution of Asian American communities intensified in the decades following the Asian American movement

and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, these enormous changes remained largely invisible in popular, mainstream culture. Instead, "yellowface" portrayals by white actors unconvincingly

disguised as Asians continued to be common fare on TV programs like Kung Fu or Broadway hits like Miss Saigon. Except for works by Asian American playwrights like David Henry Hwang and Philip Kan Gotanda, real Asian actors were still forced to perform such

demeaning roles as Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe) or obedi- ent, sexless sidekicks like Kato (Bruce Lee) and Mrs. Livingstone (Miyoshi Umeki).

Even national headlines about Asian Americans in the 1990s- rare and noteworthy as they are-seem distant now: the burning of

Koreatown in los Angeles, the campaign finance inquisitions on Asian Americans, the hunt for China spies, the first appointment of an Asian American to a president's cabinet-or Margaret Cho's All American Girl, the first TV show featuring Asian Americans. Anything happening before 1985-let alone before 1965-may os well be ancient history to those born after the immigration revolution began.

These days, with a population of 14 million and growing, the post-1965 generations of Asian Americans have grown up with a confidence in themselves that comes with the increased numbers and visibility unknown to previous generations. Within their families and communities, they have proudly maintained their Asian language, customs, and culture, without the level of fear of discrimination or

shame that existed in the past. Many have lived in neighborhoods, communities, even entire suburbs, centered around the many diverse Asian American cultures-with access to community service and advocacy organizations, with in-language, culturally-specific media, retail districts, and shopping malls. Communications with and

travel to Asia take place much more easily and less expensively now than in previous decades, adding to the sense of a global, transnational society. While Asian American role models in popular mass culture remain abysmally few, at least they exist-from astro- nauts and cabinet officers to world-class athletes and award-winning

performers and artists. In other words, for post-1965 generations, the social attitude is significantly more visible and affirmative to their Asian American ness.

Fig. 2. Christine Choy and Renee Tajima, Who Killed Vincenl Chin?, 1988. Color video. 82 minutes.

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Such broad strokes require some big caveats; they are meant only to show the qualitative leap Asian Americans have made in our own self-awareness. Our existence is still largely unrecognized by diehards who cannot see beyond the Eurocentric master narra-

tive of America or the white-black paradigm of race or those who adopt the post-9/11 fundamentalism of the "good" and "real" American versus the "evil" foreigner. Pointing out the transformational

changes and advances does not validate the myth of the model minority/ the dominant stereotype of Asian Americans to emerge from the post- 1965 era. The notion that Asian Americans are the

"good" and successful minority that never complains land has noth· ing to complain about), unlike the "bad minorities," has done great harm and injustice to our communities. For example, the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy reports that a minis-

cule 0.4 percent of philanthropic support goes to Asian American communities; it is likely that funding to Asian American arts follows a similar pattern.

The impact of the model minority stereotype on Asian American

self-worth is two pronged: first, there is the expectation that Asian Americans are bound to succeed and outperform other groups, especially in the sciences, technology, engineering, math, and busi- ness. Asian Americans who are not good at math or otherwise not

inclined toward such subjects (artists and writers, for example) find liHie support or encouragement. Asian American college students often end up with double or even triple majors-molecular biology

to satisfy the parents, the arts to nurture themselves. Second, there is the anxiety and stress that accompanies the fear of not living up to the considerable expectations of family and society; for example, the alarming rates of depression and suicide by Asian Americans frequently go undetected and untreated because, after all, the

"model minority" has no problems. To be an Asian American in the arts is so obviously and deliciously subversive, undermining both external stereotypes and internalized expectations.

When 1 lecture on such topics, 1 am often asked this question: If Asian Americans must live with a stereotype, isn't it better to be the model minority than the evil enemy "gook" invader or other noxious types? My reply is, no, it is not better. Our humanity extends far beyond one or two simplistic cartoon characters that ultimately lead to the same invisible and emasculated status in society. The quan- tum leap for Asian Americans will be to break out of such one-

dimensional chains and to allow ourselves to breathe, stretch, and

grow into any dimension we choose to define for ourselves; this is

infinitely preferable than being forced to choose from one or two stereotypes. Rather, more expression of every kind is the antidote to the invisibility and silencing of the times before 1965.

This, I believe, is where the post-1965 generations are today in this long march towards an Asian American critical mass: the door has opened into a broad landscape of ever-increasing possibilities

to express the full range of our being. The long march is, of course, far from over, especially in the face of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant repression that has fallen so heavily on Arab and South Asian

Americans. It is a reminder that the 1965 immigration revolution

was born out of the civil rights movement-a connection that is not always understood by the newer generations of immigrants and refugees who came as a result of that great struggle. It maHers little whether today's Asian Americans make overt reference to this richly textured post or not, whether they wove the bonner of AZN pride or decide to take some other path. Together, they are creating the

space for the multitude of stories that hove brought us to this point. There is no turning back as the next generations of Asian

American artists step forward to show the myriad ways of declaring themselves in their work and revealing new facets in the person-

hood of Asian Americans. Such is the opportunity before Asian American artists today-to express themselves in whatever creative forms they choose. As they add their marks to the rich textures and tapestries of society, we all stand to gain and revel in the freshness of their visions.

Helen Zia is the author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of

an American People (FSG: 2000) and coauthor of My Country Versus Me

IHyperlon: 2002).

1. Congressional Record, August 25, 1965, 21783.

2. U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration

and Naturalization Washington, D.C., February 10, 1965, 1-3.

3. Lyndon B. Johnson, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States,

U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1966, 1037-40.

4. U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the

Committee on the Judiciary, Washington D.C., February 10, 1965, 65.

5. Ibid., 71, 119.

6. Attorney General's Civil Rights Division. Report on Incidents of Anti-Asian

Violence (Boston: Office of the Attorney General, 1983).

7. Author's notes of meeting with Joe Davis, Director of Civil Rights Division, United Auto Workers, May 1983.

Fig. 3. Cover of exhibition catalogue, Asia/America: ldenlilies in Contemporary Asian Arl, 1994

REFRAMING ASIAN AMERICA

Margo Machida

The sensibilities and predilections of every generation of artists and

curators are shaped by the conditions, concerns, and conflicts of their times. In an evolving and still relatively nascent area like Asian American art, the narratives provided by contemporary exhibitions

have an especially powerful impact on the ways in which that art is subsequently understood, and this in turn shapes the evolution of how artists and curators conceive of their own practices. "One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now" speaks to significant shifts

that have occurred in the intellectual and ideological ground of Asian American art and cultural criticism since the early 1990s, when I organized "Asia/ America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art" for Asia Society Galleries (fig. 3). With the far-reach- ing impact of critical theory, and feminist and postcolonial discourse on the intellectual climate, scholars, curators, and artists alike are increasingly selF-conscious about the potential analytical and ideologi-

cal pitfalls associated with projects that foreground race, ethnicity, and other markers of identity as frameworks in which to situate visual art and its producers. As they interrogate and challenge the

premises upon which artists and their work are gathered together under collective rubrics like "Asian American art," they build on

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what is now a well established and highly elaborated body of cri-

tique surrounding the construction of identity, "othering," and the politics of representation.

Despite the considerable breadth and diversity of Asian Ameri- can artistic production-in which visual artists, like their non-Asian

contemporaries, have long produced work in every medium, genre, style, and subject matter-the subject of identity has nonetheless come to be closely associated with art and exhibitions produced in the 1980s and early 1990s, following the emergence of multicultur-

alism and identity politics as prominent issues in the American art world. By contrast, younger critics and scholars point to a genera- tional shift that has taken place in the interim, contending that for those born since the late 1960s and 1970s, a host of other critical

issues and artistic questions have assumed greater significance. Even for those artists who are concerned with questions of identity, their approaches are seen to be significantly different and often

more oblique, rather than directly confrontational. To signal a perceived rupture with the past, some commentators

invoke "post-identitarian" or "post-ethnic" rhetorics. While this approach allows for a strong sense of dramatic contrast, it could equally be argued that many of the countervailing and often contra- dictory impulses on display in exhibitions like "One Way or Another" were already evident in the daring and inventive art pro- duced by Asian Americans throughout the 1990s. Indeed, as the

concerns and visualizing strategies of younger artists owe a great debt to their predecessors, there is considerable merit in consider- ing today's complex currents in terms of a continuum of Asian

American discourse in the arts-thereby recognizing what has always been a heterogeneous and unruly conversation marked by tension and contrary assertions. Whatever one's conviction, it is noteworthy that the often-contested theme of identity /identification remains a marker against which change continues to be meas-

ured-suggesting the lingering impact of these debates in shaping successive generations' concerns and reactions.

"Asia/ America" was the first major exhibition of contemporary Asian American art mounted by Asia Society in 1994, under the leadership of then-Director of the Galleries (and now President of the Society) Vishakha N. Desai, herself a first-generation Indian American. Given that its prior focus had been on traditional Asian

art and antiquities, this project represented an ambitious and risky departure for the institution. It signaled a desire to inaugurate a closer level of engagement with Asian American communities, and was accompanied by public programming in its two-year tour across the nation. During extensive early discussions, many the- matic possibilities were considered, including a multigenerational exhibition. However, given the Society's longstanding involvement

with Asia, and the profound effects that expanding globalization and the new post-1965 migration were having on the domestic Asian communities, in the end it was agreed that a project concen-

trating on contemporary Asian-born artists who lived and worked in the United States would provide a suitable premise for this first effort.

As a New York-based Japanese American independent curator and scholar, my research and writing during the 1970s and 1980s was primarily shaped by the intellectual and political matrix of cul- tural activism, ethnic studies, and U.S. multiculturalism. Taking part in the emerging Asian American community arts movement, I

shared in my generation of activists' belief that the visual arts were a potent means by which formerly marginalized communities could

document and project their histories and lived experiences into the civic realm, in their pursuit of collective recognition and social jus- tice. Many of the early leaders of that movement were American-born second and third generation East Asians who found commonalities in being raised in this country, and often in struggling with institu-

tionalized discrimination, racism, and ethnic stereotyping. At the time I was invited to submit an exhibition proposal to Asia Society, however, the expanding presence of foreign-born Asian artists and intellectuals (including a major wave from mainland China) was

increasingly transforming the American art world and Asian Ameri- can arts communities. Their concerns were being keenly felt by artists, scholars, and cultural activists alike, spurring the U.S.-born to

respond to the changing domestic situation by finding fresh ways to engage with the newly arrived. Seeking to gauge the effects of this sweeping development, as it played out in individual expressive endeavors, the trajectory of "Asia/ America" followed my efforts to

stimulate open-ended dialogue wit.h these foreign-born artists. As a counterpart to "Asia/America," "One Way or Another"

marks consequential developments that have taken place since the nineties-a period when growing numbers of cultural institutions and university art galleries mounted exhibitions of Asian American

art1-while also providing an opportunity to develop a more rela- tional understanding that allows not only for the recognition of dif- ferences but also for delineating important points of continuity in the concerns of different generations of artists gathered together under the aegis of "Asian American art" (however defined). Like historical

and generational "book ends," both exhibitions allow us to fruitfully examine various strategies of representation and intervention, clus- ters of themes, and subjecthoods-in-formation emerging from the Asian American social and cultural landscape. The twenty artists in "Asia/ America" were born between 1936 and 1965, and primarily came to the United States as teenagers or young adults. Most arrived within two decades of 1965, following changes in restrictive

federal laws that opened this nation's doors wide to new Asian

immigration. By contrast, the seventeen foreign- and U.S.-born

artists featured in "One Way or Another," born between 1966 and 1980, came of age in this country amid the dramatic transforma- tions of the post-'65 era, and, as the curators assert, primarily view themselves as American. Whereas the civil rights movement and major military conflicts in the twentieth century involving Asian

nations and the United States (including World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War) are within the living memories (and in some cases, personal experience) of a number of the artists in

"Asia/America," for the younger artists such pivotal domestic and overseas events are comparatively distant from their immediate lives.

Incorporating a range of work, "Asia/ America" showcased various strategies of self and collective representation that drew on multiple cultural and historical sources as well as different media,

styles, and artistic precedents by twenty artists of East, Southeast, and South Asian descent. Through the lens of crosscultural identifi- cation and identity formation, "Asia/ America" sought to shed light on how larger processes of global movement and interchange play out in the expressive transactions of artists who have used their

work to negotiate their complex positionings as Asians living in the West, and their passages between societies. Seeking to foreground the ways in which artists conceive of their engagement with this

society through specific works, the readings were based on my oral interviews and thus reflect the issues that each artist chose to bring forward in discussing her or his own work at the time. Influenced by the unconventional thematic model offered in Lucy Lippard's ground- breaking work, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (1990), "Asia/America" was organized under four broad themes- Traversing, Situating, Speaking To and Of Asia, and East/West Interaction-each intended to delineate different processes by

which artists engaged with this society, with their cultures of origin, and with sites of passage and settlement. A foundational premise of the research and selections behind the exhibition was that identities

are fluid, multivalent, and continually being re-i magi ned through the symbolic interventions of individual artists.

While there were a number of group shows featuring Asian American artists during the 1980s and 1990s that also touched on

subjects like migration, diaspora, identity, gender, and this nation's often troubled engagement with Asia and Asians, it appears in ret- rospect that the mounting of this thematic exhibition in a prestigious,

New York-based venue (accompanied by an extensive catalogue) provided a degree of national visibility and sustained attention that ultimately made it canonical by default. Although never intended

to assert that identity is the sole optic through which art is to be viewed, or to function as a definitive survey, "Asia/America" initially attracted and continues to draw acclaim and criticism for its particu-

lor framing of Asian American art during the early nineties. Reac- tions to the exhibition as it traveled across the nation were strongly polarized, both within and outside the Asian American arts commu- nities. Among the many positive responses was a review noting that, "the work ... doesn't emphasize identity politics in the national context so much as what [the] curator ... refers to as a

'transnational cultural terrain.' [It] probes not the issue of race, but the cultural self, the layering of psychic trajectories that follows the geographic wanderings, which are a fact of life for increasing num- bers of non-Westerners." 2 Conversely some Asian American viewers found that they had lmle in common with the artists in the show and rejected it for not enfolding a wider range of Asian nationalities, or for not speaking directly to the issues and circumstances of the

American-born. More commonly, "Asia/America" was criticized for being exoticizing; for foregrounding sociology and politics at the expense of aesthetics; for interfering with audience responses by using explanatory wall labels; for dwelling on wrongs and mistreat-

ment; for conflating the experiences of Asians with very different origins; and for emphasizing ethnic and racial difference as the pri- mary basis of identity.

Yet with multiculturalism and identity-based art already being

contested in many quarters of the mainstream art world and the acad- emy, the mixed reception attending the appearance of "Asia/Amer- ica" in 1994 was not surprising. Indeed, controversy had also surrounded "Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contem- porary American Art" and "Bad Girls"-two other shows revolving around identity that were mounted in the same year by New York museums. 3 It followed a pattern already set by 1990, with the contentious response to "The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s" and the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the 1993 Whitney B"1ennial, which featured political art and artists of color.<~

As with "Asia/ America," there were viewers who certainly found validation for their own experiences in the art, even as such exhibi- tions were decried for being of marginal interest to mainstream audiences, for perpetuating stereotypes and rhetorics of victimization,

and for endorsing negative views of American society or Western culture. Throughout, significant questions were raised over whether the language and social agendas of identity politics are meaningful

in framing cultural production or instead delimit discourse and force artists into racialized or ideologically driven straitjackets.

Although Asian Americans during the 1980s were already

expressing misgivings about the perceived limitations of having contemporary art labeled as ethnic-specific, this critical turn is best captured by the late art historian Alice Yang. She argues that cura-

torial practices which frame Asian American identities as a nega- tion of, or as a corrective to, mainstream norms and stereotypes

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Fig. 4. Allan deSouzo. Mama India (from the Coconut Chutney series), 1996. CprinL

26 x 38 inches.

fend to simply "reinscribe difference in the effort to circumvent it."5

Yang asserts instead that the task is to shik the emphasis to reveal the multiple concerns that shape artistic practices, whether config- ured along axes of nationality, culture, religion, class, sexuality, or

other points of affiliation. More recently, video artist Paul Pfeiffer has drawn a parallel between identity politics and consumer cul- ture, likening the foregrounding of (group) identity to a type of com- modification in which artists are encouraged to sell themselves by

"act[ing] as ambassadors of their identities."6 Amid such critiques are also temporizing voices. Despite his own ambivalence about terms like "Asian American art," artist and cultural critic Allan deSouza notes that although it would be expedient to claim that such o desig- nation has "outlived its usefulness ... there are questions unanswered,

exclusionary practices left intact, and vistas yet to explore that still require some kind of model or platform from which they can be at least addressed even if not resolved"' (fig. 4). Rather than aijempt- ing to "pass as unnamed" 8 by abjuring any status other than that of the universalized "artist," deSouza asserts that declarations of hybridity and multivalency can provide a strategic means of assert- ing the various investments and identifications claimed by Asian American artists.

The impact of such shifts in critical awareness and efforts to reframe Asian American cultural production through both artistic and curatorial practices could already be seen in 1990s exhibitions like "The Curio Shop" (1993) and "Uncommon Traits: Re/locoting Asia" (1997-98). "Uncommon Traits" brought together Asian artists from North American diasporas-Americans and Canadians-under the umbrella of transmigration and shared transcultural circumstances, 9

while "The Curio Shop" explored the ways in which commodifica- tion, economic exchange, and local tourism in Asian urban commu- nities in the United States have served to reinforce distorted and

static notions of cultural authenticity. 10 Along similar lines, in the color photographic print Mama Indio (1996) from the Coconut Chutney series, Allan deSouza combines gaudy inserts from Hindi film posters with nineteenth-century ethnographic portraits of native types and images of the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City to sug-

gest the ways that European Orientalist visions of India are overtly celebrated and commodified in American popular culture.

A number of Asian American artists, including the photographer

Pipo Nguyen-duy and filmmaker and photographer Morlan Fuentes, sought to directly link questions of social and personal identification to the mechanisms and systems of representation by which Asians and Asian cultures are known in the West. Both subversively

reworked Western conventions: Pipo by inserting his own image into scenarios derived from classical European paintings and photo- graphs of the nineteenth century American West, and Fuentes through textual and filmic fabrications such as Bonlee Eulogy (1996), a fictitious ethnographic documentary about the Philippines told from the perspective of an lgorot tribesman placed on display at the 1904 St. louis World's Fair. Conversely, connections to an ethnic heritage can also be self-consciously constructed through the use of stereotypic sources. In the Untitled (flip side) series (1995), for example, American-born photographer Mimi Young fixes her aHen- tion on miniature ceramic figurines purchased by tourists from Chinatown souvenir shops. Others, like Byron Kim and Paul Pfeiffer, took different routes: Kim through the indirect referencing of diverse

human skin tones in the large-scale geometric grids of paintings like Synecdoche (1992), and Pfeiffer by digitally removing the figures of African American boxers from historic footage of famous

matches in the The Long Count (2000-0 1 ), thereby allowing ele- ments beyond race and ethnicity (the audience, the ring, ambient noise, etc.) to come forward in the video and reshape interpreta- tions of such events (fig. 5).

Moves to stake out fresh positions for an emergent generation of Asian American artists can be seen in a number of recent exhibi-

tions. Among them are two multimedia projects: Centre A in Vancouver's "Charlie Don't Surf: 4 Vietnamese American Artists" (2005) and "Pirated: a post asian perspective" (2005) at San Fran- cisco's Kearny Street Workshop. Viet Le, the curator of "Charlie Don't Surf," reflects that for younger Vietnamese like himself, the dif-

ficult years of war and its aftermath are often little more than an imaginative reconstruction devised chiefly through traces from film, video, and television images, alongside poignant family photographs and stories. 11 Nevertheless the show's re-articulations of that legacy

provide a locus for fresh and provocative imaginings by successive generations of artists. Taking global and cultural piracy as their theme, the curators of "Pirated" address how material and symbolic goods are continually appropriated and manipulated by "global elites," ranging from European colonialists to the World Trade Organization and the World Bank. Their invocation of "post Asian" echoes rhetorics of "post-black" art, while simultaneously seeking to solidly situate the exhibition in an Asian American landscape. 12

It goes without saying that all exhibition practice entails a selec- tive framing whose organizing principles and end results emerge from a highly collaborative editing process involving the individual curator(s)-each with her or his own sensibilities, intellectual invest-

ments, and professional traiectories-and mediated by competing demands and interests, foremost among them the needs and expec- tations of a specific arts venue. Moreover, with Asians continually

crossing and recrossing multiple boundaries-political, social, intel- lectual, metaphorical-no single master narrative, critical para-

digm, or dominant discourse·can truly be said to characterize and encapsulate the panorama of Asian American cultural production. Every Asian American exhibition, therefore, is inevitably a partial view of a particular time and place that provides a selective cross-

section of that larger body of work. Provided that the substantial critical dissatisfaction with l980s-style conceptions of identity and identity politics already evident prior to "Asia/America" is acknowl- edged, there is value in framing the present artistic climate through

a "now/then" paradigm premised on recognizing an accelerated

fig. 5, Paul Pfeiffer, The Long Count (Rumble in the jungle}, 2001. Digital video loop. LCD monitor, DVD player, and metal armature. 6 x 7 x 60 inches. Edition of 6, AP of 1.

shift in the questions, sensibilities, and expressions of a younger generation toward a sense of being in an open-ended, "past-identity"

· world. Conversely, what may distinguish many in the current gener-

ation of artists is not necessarily a thorough reiection of earlier Asian American discourse, but the degree to which the concerns and efforts of their predecessors-alongside a grab bag of other cultural and life-based personal choices-have been thoroughly integrated into their intellectual, emotive, and aesthetic repertoires and are therefore being manifested in less overt, even offhand ways. Nevertheless, critical discourse continues to shift. Currently some are raising the concept of a new "post post-identity" politics intended to test the critical limits of both identity politics and the strategic disavowal of identity and the refusal to be named.

While "Asia/America" foregrounded art that was mainly engaged with matters of identity and identification emerging from

migratory experience, "One Way or Another" draws out certain

distinctions between the attitudes and production of one generation and the next by selecting work that points away from or compli- cates such issues. Yet despite significant differences in orientation and curatorial methods (the present show was organized by a three-member team), these exhibitions share kindred features. Both

have been originated by Asia Society, which remains strongly asso- ciated with Asia rather than being regarded as a museum of Ameri- can art. While "One Way or Another" also includes artists of mixed

heritages, both shows group artists together by Asian ethnicities, and enfold them in the rubric of "Asian American art." Indeed in order to take part in these exhibitions, artists must consent to being identified within an Asian-specific context.

Gathering varied works under common themes helps to focus attention around important moments in the ongoing evolution of the Asian American cultural imagination. By acting as a public locus of identification, exhibitions like "One Way or Another" and

"Asia/America" allow for the formation of new lines of affiliation and spaces of transmission around which people may come together. Such projects, moreover, also point to the fact that group-

ing artists together based on shared perceptions of ethnicity, culture, or "Asian American-ness" does not necessarily contradict a critical

recognition of internal diversity. Indeed, as philosopher Jose Medina has observed, drawing upon Wittgenstein's metaphor of familial

resemblance, although members of a family may share certain traits, there are also significant variations among them. Since, as he maintains, "identity is bound up with difference," it follows that "all identity categories are intrinsically heterogeneous and necessarily

unstable." 13 Accordingly, one may speak of collectivities without necessarily positing a totalizing homogeneity among individuals or

their particular concerns.

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A work of art involves a communicative act that projects its maker's ideas, beliefs, and experiences into the sphere of the social

imaginary, where these images become part of a shared body of information through which we constitute our understandings of the present historical moment, our positions within it, and our relations

to one another. Seen in dialogic and processual terms, the presence of art in the social realm opens communicative spaces that offer fresh and often unpredictable opportunities for making linkages with other peoples, events, and subiectivities, while also suggesting

the vista of constructive possibilities waiting to be explored. In light of the spirited responses generated by "Asia/ America" over the last dozen years, "One Way or Another" will undoubtedly contribute appreciably to this maturing conversation.

Margo Mach ida is Associate Professor of Art History and Asian American

Studies at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, and Visiting Scholar in New

York University's Asian/Pacific/ American Studies Program.

1. Exhibitions during the 1990s include: "The View from Within: Japanese

American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942-1945" {1992), "Relocations

and Revisions: The Japanese American Internment Reconsidered" (1992),

"Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean and Korean American Art" (1993),

"They Pointed From Their Hearts: Pioneer Asian American Artists'' (1994},

"Picturing Asia America: Communities, Culture, Difference" (1994), "With

New Eyes: Toward an Asian American Art History in the West" {1995), "Mem-

ories of Overdevelopment: Philippine Diaspore in Contemporary Art" (1996),

"Uncommon Traits: Re/locating Asia" (1997-98), "Out of India: Contempo-

rary Art of the South Asian Diaspore" (1997), and "At Home & Abroad: 20

Contemporary Filipino Artists" (1998}. Each offers a different mode of framing

Asian American artistic production, whether its orientation was historical,

ethnic-specific, regional, transnational, or some combination of approaches.

2. Suni Chen, "Us Others in the Global Village," Colors (Minneapolis: Four

Colors Productions Inc.) 4, no. 4 (July-August 1995), 54.

3. "Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art," 1994-95, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York;

"Bad Girls," 1994, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, New York.

4. "The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s," 1990, co-organized

by and presented with the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem; "1993

Whitney Biennial," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York.

5. Alice Yang, "Asian American Exhibitions Reconsidered," in Why Asia?

Contemporary Asian and Asian American Art, eds. Jonathan Hay and Mimi

Young (New York: New York University Press, 1998}, 97.

6. Paul Pfeiffer, "Paul Pfeiffer and John Baldessari in Conversation;' in Paul

Pfeiffer (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2003), 33. 7. Allan deSouza, "Name Calling," in Tradeshow: New Currents in Recent Asian

American Art (Shanghai: c2 Gallery at the Pottery Workshop Shanghai, 2003), 2.

8. Ibid.

9. "Uncommon Traits: Re/locating Asia" was a three-part exhibition organized

for CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, New York running consecutively From September

13, 1997-March 28, 1998.1! was co-curated by Marilyn Jung, Monica Chou,

and Margo Machida.

l 0. "The Curio Shop" was collaboratively organized by members of the New

York-based Godzilla: Asian American Art Nerwork, and presented at Artists

Space from February 18-April 3, 1993.

11. See Viet le, "How Come Charlie Don't Surf?" in Charlie Don't Surf:

4 Vietnamese American Artists (Vancouver: Vancouver International Centre for

Contemporary Asian Art, 2005), 7-12.

12. Samantha Chanse, telephone conversation with the author, January 10,

2006. "Pirated: a post asian perspective" was on view at Kearny Street

Workshop from May 5-29, 2005.

13. Jose Medina, "Identity trouble: Disidentification and the problem of differ-

ence," Philosophy & Social Criticism, 29, no. 6 {2003}, 657.

ORIGIN MYTHS: A SHORT AND INCOMPLETE

HISTORY OF GODZILLA

Karin Higa

What was Godzilla? From 1990 until the middle of the decade, a shifting configuration of individuals committed to a broad notion of "Asian American artists" gathered under that name in New York.

From a dozen people, it grew exponentially, even spawning off- spring elsewhere. The underlying intent was simple but it had a cat- alytic effect: artists, writers, and curators with shared interests could band together, harness their intellectual and social networks, chal-

lenge each other, and take action to support art by Asian Americans. My own association with Godzilla was short and intense, but

because I was there at the beginning-nat at its birth but early

enough-l'm granted some measure of credibility as an OG (fig. 6). For a year or so, 1 was one of Godzilla's loyal partisans-not one of its leaders or visionaries, but a fervent participant. After I moved

to los Angeles to work with the newly formed Japanese American National Museum, I witnessed how Godzilla grew and flourished while its activities took on a near-mythic status among Asian Ameri-

cans in the visual arts. Godzilla was proof that Asian American artists could be a Force with an irreverent tone that counteracted an art world version of the model minority myth of Zen-inspired artists

and venerable traditions. But by the middle of the 1990s, the

changing social context necessitated different ways of conceptualiz- ing the display and interpretation of art by Asian Americans. The

proliferation of "identity-based" work developed into a convention- alized language, triggering a backlash, which unfortunately lumped divergent and distinct practices under a simplistic rubric. The early

thinkers pursued other projects. There wasn't necessarily an official end to Godzilla. It just slowly petered out.

Looking back aher more than fiheen years, I see how

Godzilla-at least in its early incarnations-was even more radical in its concept of an Asian American arts practice than I understood at the time. The flimsy and scientifically unsupported notion of race

may make any race-based alliance suspect, but Godzilla's loose structure, openness to diverse Formal and conceptual artistic practices, and nonjudgemental stance to varying approaches of Asian Ameri- can identity accommodated critique at the same time it strategically

accepted notions of race as a pragmatic organizing principle. It was three artists-Ken Chu, Bing lee, and Margo Mach ida-who met in July 1990 with the idea to form some kind of alliance to address the state of contemporary Asian American visual artists. 1

They understood that power within the field of culture aligned along

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Fig. 6. Members of Godzilla; Standing left to right Arion Huang, Margo Machido,

Charles Yuen, Helen Oji, Janet Lin, Ken Chu; seated left to right: Colin Lee, Byron Kim,

Bing lee, Karin Higa, Eugenie Tsai, Tomie Arai, Garson Yu. Not pictured: Yong Soon

Min, Mei·lin Liu, Stefanie Mar.

axes of privilege where making art was only one part of the equa- tion. Access to dialogue, venues for display, and engaged critical response were essential components of an arts ecology. The absence

of any one part halted the cycle. The politics of art rather than the making of art was therefore a

central concern of the original organizers. The minutes taken from the first meeting at Margo's studio are revealing. Aside from their

astute analysis of cultural race politics, that there were minutes at all suggests a seriousness of intent from the outset. Many of the things they discussed at the first meeting are still relevant today. They· talked about the need for a library or archive that systematically collected material on Asian American artists, the wish for informed critics, the

definitions of "Asian" versus "Asian American," an interest in ways of working outside of "majority" culture, and the need for institu- tional support-an Asian American art museum-to not only validate Asian American artists, but also to allow them to work outside of a de facto quota system operative among mainstream art institutions.

Asian American artists had grown tired of being invited to partici- pate in activities in May-Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.

The interest in forming a museum no doubt derived from "The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s," a messy ond unprecedented three-port exhibition in 1990 coorganized by the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, the New Museum of Con- temporary Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem that explicitly foregrounded explorations of race and identity in contemporary art, though at those early Godzilla meetings there were debates about

the feasibility and ultimate desirability of duplicating conventional institutional structures. Two books were influential. lucy Lippard's

Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, a panoramic exploration of artists throughout the country, was staggering in the

sheer breath and diversity of artists it documented. Lippard's role as an influential critic, whose ability to see and assess major moments in art as they were forming, validated an interest in artists of color at the same time criticism of the book showed how dismissive main-

stream culture could be. In an approach quite distinct from Lippard's, the anthology Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cul- ture, edited by Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Cornel West with images selected by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, assessed cultural marginalization by examining underlying institu- tional and theoretical frameworks of difference through the various

lenses of race, gender, sexual preference, and class. Yet a prevail- ing attitude is perhaps best summarized by a 1991 remark by Helen Frankenthaler. In reference to the National Endowment for the

Arts's funding recipients, according to the New York Times, Franken- thaler "questioned whether the demand for cultural diversity and social consciousness in grant giving was subverting the criteria for artistic excellence" 2-the implication being that cultural diversity and artistic excellence were mutually exclusive.

By the third meeting in September 1990, when I joined, the group had grown to include Tomie Arai, Mo Bahc, Arion Huang, Byron Kim, Stefani Mar, and Yang Soon Min. Shortly thereafter, we decided on several things including the name Godzilla. Was it too "camp?" Would its Japanese origins inadvertently signal a predomi- nance of one ethnicity rather than the pan-Asian American coalition

we intended? Would we get in trouble for using a presumably copy- righted name? In the end, the monster's origins seemed the perfect metaphor. 3 After all, Godzilla wasn't even the monster's real name, but rather an anglicization of Gojira. His reemergence from the depths of the Pacific was tied to postwar American atomic interven-

tion in the region. His celluloid existence was filled with Asian masses whose English words didn't match their lip movements and the primary vehicle for his dissemination was the mass medium of American TV. Nothing about Godzilla was authentically Asian. He

was the ultimate hybrid monster. A spirit of adventure, self-reliance, and collectivity characterized

Godzilla's incarnation. Membership was conferred upon anyone who showed up. In the early months, the meetings were small, con- sisting of a dozen or so of us who met in the studios, apartments, or workplaces of whoever volunteered. While the organizational struc- ture-such as it was-was flat, the unofficial leaders were Ken and

Margo. It was pretty much agreed that Ken was the tallest Chinese American man anyone had ever met. His height, effusive intelligence,

and goofy enthusiasm became an inspiring force. Margo brought

an organizational rigor and seriousness to the group that helped

maintain its focus. Both had the vision, the organizational sawy,

and dogged optimism to channel divergent perspectives into a

cohesive group. We didn't have uniform opinions about art and

what farms it should take, but we did shore an openness to engaged dialogue about art by Asian Americans.

Some of the more formative experiences for me were the small

gatherings where Godzilla-ites and invited out-of-towners would

make informal slide presentations about their work followed by dis- cussion. It took little in the way of resources to organize but enacted

the theory that we could learn by looking, thinking, and talking about Asian American artists. Allan deSouza, who then lived in

london and had founded Panchayat, a group for South Asian and other artists of color in Britain, was one of the early visitors and pro-

vided an international perspective over a potluck dinner at Helen

Oji's loh. This was later followed by visits from David Medalla and Mel Chin, though by this time the number of people that constituted Godzilla took us from private homes to borrowed public spaces in New York Cily like the Clocktower Gallery, Artists Space, and the Chinatown History Museum (now called the Museum of Chinese in

the Americas). Panel discussions broadened the conversation.

Pamela lee, Eugenie Tsai, and Alice Yang talked about curatorial practice in a session moderated by Tomie Arai, who along with

Kerri Sakamoto later organized a discussion on notions of "quality" and "Asian American aesthetic."A

One of the first public actions of Godzilla was to publish a newsletter "to establish a dynamic forum that will foster information

exchange, mutual support, documentation, and networking among

the expanding numbers of Asian American visual artists all across

the United States."'The first edition was published in March 1991, with a design by artists Charles Yuen and Garson Yu. Each of us pitched in $40 to cover printing and mailing costs. Although a modest four pages, including listings of exhibitions, regional news,

and short pieces on critical issues in the art world, the newsletter

explicitly telegraphed a diverse approach to what constituted Asian American arts. While the Asian American community arts movements

of the 1960s and 1970s were recognized as significant antecedents, what distinguished Godzilla's approach was its ecumenical approach to Asian American identity.6

In our current age of instant communication and the broad dis-

semination of information through electronic formats, it may be diffi-

cult to fathom how the initial printed newsletter could make such a

radical impact, but it did. It was tangible evidence of the existence of Asian American artists and linked seemingly unconnected activi-

ties under a single rubric. The power of the printed word became

even more apparent after Robert Atkins wrote a mere eight lines about

it in his "Scene & Heard" column in The Vi/loge Voice,' which gen- erated considerable buzz and gave Godzilla currency as something

official. (In a sign of how much times have changed, it also included Ken's home phone number for those seeking more information.)

Atkins's column asked the question, "What if there are no Asian

American artists in the Whitney Biennial?" Although the 1991 exhi- bition had yet to open, the artist list showed no Asian American

painters, sculptors, or photographers, though Martin Wong was included in the installation by artist collective Group Material. Aher the exhibition opened, a working group consisting of Bryon Kim,

Margo Mach ida, Yang Soon Min, Paul Pfeiffer, and Eugenie Tsai drahed a letter to the new Whitney Museum of American Art direc- tor, David Ross. It excoriated the Whitney for its conspicuous

absence of Asian American visual artists: "We feel the Biennial

fails to live up to its intention, as stated in the official brochure, of

providing 'a framework for better understanding the diverse cre-

ative vitalily that characterizes the art of this period."'' In the fall, Ross invited a small group of us to meet with him. While at a basic level we talked of inclusivity and representation, our larger argu-

ment was more nuanced. Curators and museum professionals make

Fig. 7. Cover of exhibition brochure for "The New World Order Ill: The Curio Shop," February 18 to April 3, 1993, Artists Space, New York. Designed by Carol Sun, member of Godzillo.

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value judgments that are based on spheres of knowledge. What if those spheres are limited because of race? Ross sympathetically and succinctly observed in our meeting that, "People tend to order

what's on the menu." We proposed to expand the choices. We pre~ sented specific educational initiatives which included submitting

slides of Asian American artists, organizing studio visits, and coor- dinating roundtable discussions. For many of us, the Whitney action

was symbolic and strategic. It was not about a specific number of

Asian American artists on an exhibition checklist; it was about unmasking the institutional and theoretical frameworks that limited

what and how people could see. There is nothing like controversy to genercite interest. The June

1991 issue of Art in America covered our Whitney challenge in a small notice, "Guerrilla Girls Move Over?" The Godzilla meetings

became large and heady affairs, aHendance at which had a certain

cachet. The newsleHers, which came out irregularly from 1991 to 1993, grew in the number of pages and the ambition of content, due in part to the increased editorial involvement of Eugenie Tsai

and Kerri Sakamoto. The early 1992 issue weighed in at 12 pages and featured extended reviews, expanded listings and regional news, and idiosyncratic musings like Abe Yoshida's, "Marcel Duchamp on Asian American Art/' a half-page compilation of Duchamp's writ-

ings that could be about Asian American art.9 In the same issue, Paul Pfeiffer's perspectives an "Out in the 90s: Contemporary Per- spectives on Gay and Lesbian Art," 10 a symposium at the Whitney Museum that included Ken Chu as one of the panelists, perceptively explored the intersections of sexuality, race, gender, class, and age,

complicating a simple notion of Asian American identity.

In 1993, at the invitation of curator Connie Butler, Godzilla organized a major exhibition at Artists Space titled "The Curio Shop/'

coordinated by Gadzilla-ite Skowmon Hastanan (figs. 7-9). The choice of the curio shop as an organizing framework for an exhibi-

tion of Asian American artists organized by Asian American artists

contains several reversals. The curio shop in an Asian American

context brings to mind Chinatowns, where non-Chinese can buy

kitschy representations of supposedly authentic Chinese culture. But

who's playing whom? The consumer with the buying power or the seller who plays with stereotype to move goads? Godzilla, as the organizer of the exhibition, seems to call attention to and implicate

itself in the various and complex transactions between object and

consumer, cultural producer and cultural performer.

The 1993 Whitney Biennial, now referred to as the "political" bienniat explored the issue of race head-on, beginning with Daniel

J. Martinez's admission tags with single words that added up to the infamous statement, "I can't imagine ever wanting to be white."

It also featured a number of Asian American artists. The next year,

Figs. 8 and 9. lns!allatran view of "The Curio Shop," organized in 1993 by Godzillo at Artists Space, New York.

in an unprecedented move, Asia Society held its first exhibition of

contemporary Asian and Asian American art. Organized by Margo

Mach ida, it focused on artists who were immigrants and their

negotiation of identity as expressed in the narrative of their art. Two major institutions-one of American art, the other of Asian art-

were foregrounding Asian American artists. Museums hired or

expanded the responsibilities of Asian American curators: Eugenie

Tsai at the Whitney, Alice Yang at the New Museum, and Lydia Yee at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The Japanese American National

Museum, a cultural history museum founded and run by Japanese

Americans presented another paradigm of art and community. Before

this period, it was commonplace for museums to have no Asian Americans on staff or no Asian American artists in their exhibition programs. For credible institutions today, this is inconceivable-a

lasting impact of Godzilla. Clearly, the context that propelled Godzilla had changed by

the mid-l990s. At the same time, Godzilla seemed to change too, morphing from its earlier incarnations into a set of increasingly fixed positions. From both within the group and without, Godzilla and "Asian American art" came to signify a specific type of artistic practice rather than a set of artistic interrogations. "Identity-based" art took on a codified language and mode of exposition that Asian American artists were increasingly expected to manifest rather than

the multifarious approach to Asian American identity and art central to Godzilla's origins.

In a 1992 Godzilla newsletter, Byron Kim obliquely addressed the burden of representation for an Asian American artist. As an abstract painter obsessed with the paintings of Ad Reinhardt and Brice Marden Byron wrote, "I'd like to make some large paintings exactly like Brice Marden's Grove Group. And I mean exactly like his. "These paintings would respond directly to those who ask me, 'Why are you making abstract paintings?' The 'you' meaning

Asian-American-artist, artist-of-color, artist-with-something to say. Of course, my intention would be to make this line of questioning the inevitable content of the painting." 11 In a double critique, Byron challenged the implied assumptions in the query "why abstract paintings?" at the same time he hints at the expansive possibilities for complex content in the language of abstraction.

For me, "One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now" begins where early Godzilla lefi off. It takes a heterogeneous approach to artistic practice that defies the notion that there is such a thing as "Asian American art," at least one with a shared and cohesive set of formal or conceptual characteristics. Instead, there are Asian

American artists from many different places who make different

kinds of art. Yet the scientifically suspect notion of race remains a factor in the American experience. In a 2003 conversation with Eve Oishi, Patty Chang underscores the specificity that her race gives to her work when she appears; regardless of the other content in the video, Chang states, "I'm always doing an Asian woman." 12 What "Asian woman" or Asian American signifies today is what "One Way or Another" proposes to question.

Karin Higa is Senior Curator of Art at the Japanese American National

Museum in Los Angeles.

1. Meeting Summary, July 25, 1990. From the personal archives of the author.

2. Cited in Byron Kim, "NEA Chief Reserves Denial of Grant to Mel Chin,"

Godzillo I, no. I (spring 1991), 2.

3. Other names considered included "East West Works" and "Project for Asian

Pacific American Art." Meeting Summary, September 14, 1990.

4. "Notions of the 'Q' Factor," Godzilla 2, no. 1 (summer 1992), 2. 5. "Open Let!er to Our Readers," Godzifla 1, no. 1 {spring 1991), 1.

6. The section on regional news included reports of Vishakha Desai's recent

appointment as Director of Asia Society Galleries, the Asian Pacific Islander

participation at the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) benefit auction,

Mayumi Tsutakawa's position with the King County (Sea!!le) Arts Commission.

7. Robert Atkins, "Scene & Heard," The Village Voice, April 2, 1991, 82.

8. The full letter and a summary of the events were published in Godzilla 1, no. 2 {winter 1991), 1-2

9. Abe Yoshida, ''Marcel Duchamp on Asian American Art," Godzilla 2, no.

(summer 1992), 6.

10. Paul Pfeiffer, "Out in the 90s," Godzi//a 2, no. 1 (summer 1992), 4.

11. Byron Kim, "An A!!empt at Dogma," Godzilla 2, no. l {summer 1992), 8.

12. Cited in Russell Ferguson, Patty Chang: Shangri-La (Los Angeles: Hammer

Museum, 2004), 17.

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