Inside of a new exhibit at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, there's a curious collection that includes a large raindrop-shaped mirror, stacks of Botan rice bags on top of pallets, burned denim on canvas and a video that shows a man with a knife strapped to his head, trying to chop an apple spinning on top of a record player.
What these works have in common is that they are made by artists across the Asian diaspora. And they each confront orientalism and the impact that this term, rooted in the legacy of western colonization, still have in their everyday lives, said Julianne Miao, curatorial associate at the Nasher Museum. She added that when many folks think of Asian art, they might think of the scroll paintings and ceramic sculptures seen in ancient Asian art exhibits.
"Asian art is wildly underrepresented in many museum collections across the country," said Miao. "So this exhibition really showcases a number of artists working in really different mediums, different styles. This exhibition really subverts a lot of these stereotypes of what Asian art is supposed to be."
The exhibit, called "Dis/orient," features the works of nine artists based around the world and is open for viewing until July 19. Halfway through the exhibition, a piece by multimedia artist Korakrit Arunanondchai, which features burned denim, will be switched out due to its light-sensitive nature.
Only one of the works features a local artist, Lien Truong, a painter and professor at the UNC Department of Art and Art History. Truong's painting, "My mother, she fell from the sky," contains a portrait of her mother, a Vietnamese refugee who experienced French colonization and the Vietnam War. Since her mother, like many refugees, were severed from their homeland and came to the U.S., Truong said it's almost like they were "dropped from the sky into a new foreign land."
But her mother isn't the only woman depicted in the painting – there are figures of Vietnamese women holding a rifle, as well as silhouettes of women painted on silks printed with historic textile designs, which Truong says is a reference to global textile trade that occurred during the European colonization era. The painting is one of a series of works Truong created that uses female figures from orientalist paintings that portrayed Asian women as submissive and overly sexualized.
"I'm taking those figures and recasting them, and so by abstracting them, I'm taking away the sexualized nature of their context, and I'm making them into silhouettes," Truong explained. "In these paintings, they're actually embracing each other. I'm giving them agency, like they're showing love, they're showing resistance, they're showing strength. So I'm kind of recreating these narratives."
Miao not only wants patrons to come away with a different perspective of what Asian art can look like — she also hopes that the exhibit gives Asian diaspora visitors the opportunity to possibly see themselves in these pieces.
"As an Asian American curator, I recognize a lot of the holes in telling narratives about Asian art and contemporary Asian art," she said. "So it's really meaningful to me to be able to put this together at the Nasher and really show and tell stories that I relate to. And I hope people can connect with that as well."
The Nasher Museum is still in the process of planning programs and tours for "Dis/orient," which will likely occur in the spring, Miao said.
