80 Washington Square East, NYU

Legacies: Asian American Art Movements

in New York City (1969-2001)

September 11 – December 20, 2024

80WSE

Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969-2001) is an expansive survey of rarely-seen artwork and archival material by artists that constitute and exceed “Asian American,” a label denoting a cultural and national identity invented in 1968. Utilizing an interdisciplinary and research-driven praxis, Legacies uncovers how artists of Asian descent have historically negotiated identity in America as a set of situated practices and institutional structures amidst transnational diasporas, racial phantasms, and political imaginaries.

Presenting over 90 artists and collectives, Legacies is the first institutional survey exhibition focusing on artists of Asian descent who were based in New York City.
  
Legacies features works – paintings, drawings, sculpture, and new media, among other mediums – that serve to complicate the idea of defining “Asian American art” as singular and static through the lens of art history, cultural studies, and sociology. Recognizing that “identity-based” categories of art are bound to the dominant racial ideology and political narrative of a nation, the exhibition instead focuses on a multiplicity of subjectivities, political horizons, and artistic expressions to interrogate life in America.
  
In addition to aesthetic concerns such as figuration, abstraction and materiality, the exhibition tracks how these artists addressed migration, displacement, racism, cultural autonomy, Western imperialism, societal violence, and representations of sexuality and gender through the decades.

Legacies also constellates three key artist collectives and organizations: Godzilla: Asian American Art Network; the Basement Workshop; and Asian American Arts Centre. All three organizations were artistic, social, and political hubs for diasporic Asian artists in New York that intersected with other marginalized communities.

The exhibition also features newly commissioned installations, including a large-scale Washington Square Windows installation by new-media artist Shu Lea Cheang connected to the 30th anniversary of her groundbreaking film, Fresh Kill (1994). 

Filmmaker Rea Tajiri presents an assemblage sculpture that expands on her groundbreaking History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige (1991), a meditation on her family history and Japanese and Japanese American internment during World War II.   

Organized by Howie Chen, Curator at 80WSE, Jayne Cole Southard, PhD., CUNY, and christina ong, PhD. 

Produced by Jon Huron, 80WSE.  Gini Yu Pei Lee, Curatorial Assistant. Gracia Brown and Daniella Occhineri, Research Assistants. Kate Edelson, Exhibition Registrar. 

The exhibition’s presentation is made possible by Teiger Foundation.  

Special thanks for the support of the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Squid Frames, chenzo.studio, and Fales Library and Special Collections. Equipment provided in part by Lower East Side Ecology Center and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Poster titled “ALL OUT FOR AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY!” by the African Liberation Support Committee. It features a large illustration of people breaking chains in front of an outline of the African continent. Bold red text calls for support of Southern African struggles, opposition to superpower war preparations, and participation in a Washington D.C. march and rally on May 28. Event details are listed at the bottom.
Arlan Huang, All Out for African Liberation Day!, 1977
Black-and-white portrait of a woman wearing a chador. Her face is partially obscured by a rifle held vertically in the center of the image. Persian script is written across her face, and her intense gaze is directed straight at the viewer.
Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, 1994
Black-and-white photograph by Tseng Kwong Chi. The artist stands centered and smiling in a Mao suit on a confetti-filled Wall Street during the Veterans Day Parade, surrounded by a crowd and American flags, with towering buildings and Gothic architecture in the background.
Tseng Kwong Chi, New York, NY 1984 (Veterans Day Parade), 1979
Courtesy of Muna Tseng Dance Projects Inc., New York
Color photograph of a red and gold onion-domed pavilion with arched openings on a seaside boardwalk. The structure faces the ocean, with a clear blue sky above. A Ferris wheel is visible in the distance on the left. The scene has pastel-colored flooring and decorative trim.
Al-An, deSouza  Rumpty-Trumpty Series #5, 1997
Cover of Bridge: The Magazine of Asians in America (Vol. 1, No. 6, July/August 1972). A white illustrated face in anguish is overlaid with three strands of barbed wire, set against a red background. The word “BRIDGE” appears at the top in bold black typography.
Bridge Magazine Vol. 1 No. 6. New York: Basement Workshop, 1972 
Silkscreen print featuring a portrait of a woman in traditional attire on the left, framed by a floral decorative border. The central and right panels depict a blue-toned urban Chinatown streetscape with apartment buildings and fire escapes. A small vignette in the bottom right corner shows a woman and child seated together, surrounded by stylized patterns.
Tomie Arai, Chinatown, 1989
Still from a video showing a woman in a futuristic silver bodysuit with exaggerated sculptural shoulder pads and a platinum blonde wig. She stands in a brightly lit, hyper-modern airport terminal with a distorted, glowing blur effect that adds a surreal, sci-fi atmosphere. The woman holds a glass orb and wears a small crown.
Mariko Mori, Miko no Inori, 1996