Objects from Asia

This piece is motivated by a trip to the Modern Museum of Arts, where I encountered a wall of “miscellaneous” ceramics and artifacts clustered into a ceiling-to-floor glass cabinet, positioned in the hallway in exposure to direct sunlight with the labels “Objects from Asia.” To see these representations of such diverse utility, meaning, and culture reduced into a title of three words without elaboration, deprived of the necessary care artworks deserve, and relegated to supplementary decoration was immensely disappointing. Thus, through this work, I strive to raise awareness of the mistreatment and plundering of Asian Art and reinstate power to these culturally emblematic pieces.
The three vases included are based on a Japanese Yokohama-shi vase, a Korean vase from the Goryeo Dynasty, and a Chinese Qinhua bottle, respectively, from left to right. All of these are possessed by the British Museum without any detailed indication of their history or method of acquisition (Wang 2023). The plundering of artworks during the colonial era takes them “out of the contexts in which they were produced to depoliticize them and re-signify them for a consumption of an occidental gaze” (Flynn 2020, 180). This form of perception is embodied by the faceless figures.
However, I revert the attention from the encased objects being perceived to the spectators perceiving it by personifying an artifact and rendering the composition in their first-person point of view. The artifact is looking down upon the observers, the glass case in closer proximity to them than the exhibited ceramics, creating an illusion of spectators being trapped, trapped in their direct (through the eyes of a childlike figure) and indirect (through the cellphone) consumption of an amalgamation of items stripped of their significance–– an ultimately meaningless contemplation. Inspired by the performance of Black Art Action Berlin in the Humbolt forum with binoculars, I, too, aim to “return a gaze,” thus holding them “accountable for what happens within this line of vision” (Guerin 2023, 134). The curious posture of the child is meant to embody the hope for active inquiry and contemplation of diverse cultures, albeit disrupted by the cellphone flash of an adult standing by. I wish to leave an optimistic message at the center of this piece –– a potential for change in attitude and treatment towards culturally significant works of art.