It’s a short, but eclectic list this week with music and dance, Taiwanese food with a twist, experimental films, and a discussion and musical presentation about the events at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
Look for our interviews with The Food of Taiwan author Cathy Erway, Susan Cheng of Music from China, Zhu Yi of this past Sunday’s event Welcome to the Republic of Extraordinary Ability, and others coming soon.
Also coming soon are these events:
Yu-ting Feng’s Dear Deer project returns to New York next weekend. Data visualization artist Youjin Shin joins the exhibition for a talk on June 13. Read more about this interactive project in our post from last year.
Beijing band Birdstriking comes to Baby’s All Right on June 15. Read about them and listen to their new album in our post
The New York Asian Film Festival will run from June 26 – July 8 at Film Society of Lincoln Center and July 9 – 11 at SVA Theatre. We’ll have details soon.
Dance duo inTW presents four works at the Martha Graham Studio Theater June 27 and 28.
We add listings to our one-time and short term event and ongoing exhibition calendars as we learn of them. If you know of anything or would like to contribute photos or an article, shoot us an email at beyondchinatown@gmail.com.
Upcoming Events
1) Global Mashup #5: Haiti Meets China – Flushing Town Hall mashes up two cultures on one stage with an open dance floor. Agoci Band from Haiti will be serving a hot helping of Kompa Music and FJ Music Fusion, Fei Fei Yang and Sylvia Shen’s group that brings China’s traditional music to NYC, will strut their stuff and then jam together in the last set. The evening begins with dance lessons so your moves will fit the music.
Friday, June 5, 7 PM
Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd., Flushing
$15/General public; $10/Members and students
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2) Urban Weasterns – Curated by Tiger Chengliang Cai,“Weastern” comes from the combination of Eastern and Western, suggesting the circumstances of our era; it also functions as a metaphor for the complicated nature of the blurring that has occurred between the boundary between East and West. The screening features 5 video artists (or artist groups): Yasmine Laraqui, Sinan Tuncay, Shaw Zhifeng Xu, Lei Lei & Thomas Sauvin and Tiger Chengliang Cai. All of the featured artists are originally from so-called Near East and Far East countries, as defined by an occidental-centric paradigm. By curating the event, Tiger uses his own videos and animations as threads to weave the video works of his fellow artists into an integrated discourse on urban issues both for East and West – for the Weast.
Fans of the incredible salvaged photograph collection Beijing Silvermine will be interested in “Recycled” an animation by Lei Lei and Thomas Sauvin that uses 3,000 of the photos to resurrect and reconstruct common memories of a city.
Presented as part of EZUFF’s 7th Projection Project.
Friday, June 5, 8:30 PM
Spectrum, 121 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor
$10/General admission
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3) 456聊天室 (456 Forum) Artist Talk: Ming-Jer Kuo – Visual artist Ming-Jer Kuo talks about his works and looks back at his short term creative life. Talk will likely be in Mandarin.
Sunday, June 7, 5:30 PM
Gallery 456, 456 Broadway
Free
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4) Taiwanese Pub Dinner with Cathy Erway – Analogizing the idea of a communal family dinner in Taiwan with the communal feeling of a pub, The Food of Taiwan author Cathy Erway puts a “bar food” spin on well-known Taiwanese dishes, for example San Bei Ji (三杯鸡 ) Wings in this six-course Sunday dinner at gastronome paradise Jimmy’s No. 43.
Books will be available for purchase.
Sunday, June 7, 7 PM
Jimmy’s No. 43, 43 East 7th Street
$45/per person
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5) New Music in Bryant Park with Music from China – Spend an early summer evening in the park with Music From China who will perform an eclectic mix of traditional Chinese and contemporary classical music, including works by Yang Yong, Zhou Long, and Chen Yi.
Monday, June 8, 5:30 PM
Upper Terrace Steps (by the library), Bryant Park
Free
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6) The Challenge: Tiananmen Square – A panel discussion and a musical presentation about the 1989 social revolts in Beijing, China. Co-sponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.
The panel will feature Rowena Xiaoqing He (Lecturer, Department of Government, Harvard University) and Fang Zheng (Civil Rights Activist and Tiananmen survivor) and be moderated by Luis Muñiz Argüelles (Professor of Law, University of Puerto Rico and member of the International Academy of Comparative Law).
Virtuoso violinist and Chinese composer Jason Kao Hwang will present his premier of “The Challenge: Tiananmen Square.” A piece that resemblances the cry for free speech in China and the students’ attempts in 1989 to make this demand a reality.
The audience, musicians, composer, conductor, and panelists will provide their perspective about the performance and its relationship to the panel discussion and/or their personal connection with similar events or aesthetic experiences.
Thursday, June 11, 8 PM
Lovinger Theater, Lehmon College, 250 Bedford Park Boulevard, Bronx
$10/suggested donation
Ongoing Films and Shows
We’ll let you know as soon as we know.
Exhibitions
Bushwick Open Studios – A number of artists of Chinese descent are participating in New York’s biggest open studios event this weekend, Friday – Sunday, June 5 – 7. We’ll have our post introducing them up soon.
Let us know if you or someone you know is participating, and we’ll spread the word.
Do let us know also, if you know of a show that should be included on our regular listings.
Just added and opening:
Sophie Wen-shuo Yen (嚴玟鑠): Cutting the Fragrance (Hwang Gallery, 6/9 – 6/28) – Artist Yen Wen-Shuo’s recent artistic endeavors have culminated in her new series, “Cutting Fragrance,” a series that examines the transformations of the artist’s body and the concomitant changes in her own life experiences. In Mandarin, the pronunciation of “Cutting Fragrance” is similar to “seppuku,” the Japanese suicide ritual of abdomen-cutting. It is a phonetic association that was deliberately made by the artist, as the image of the cutting of the abdomen recalls the artist’s own experiences embracing motherhood and nurturing the life of another human being in her abdomen. The scar left by her C-section as she birthed her child into this world looks like a gentle smile etched unto her belly. To the artist, it is a smile that marks a new stage in her life and new artistic directions for her to embark upon. The agony that accompanied the making of that scar has now sublimated into a stage of spiritual transcendence. The process of creation, both physical and artistic, may be painful at first, but after the cut, one can smell the fragrance seeping through, the blossom that bursts forth after so much toiling and pain.
The“Cutting Fragrance” series is primarily made from mixed media, with acrylic being the most prominent medium, followed by the application of fabric to her paintings. In terms of its leitmotif, “Cutting Fragrance” continues to explore the imagery of flowers, an imagery that has preoccupied the artists’ recent works. The word “Fragrance” also serves to reinforce the connections between flowers and the artist’s work.
In this series, Yen employs automatism techniques and uses the dripping of paint to evoke the bloody sight of abdomen-cutting.This imagery is used to convey the fragility, as well as the strength, of a person’s life. The whole series, “Cutting Fragrance,” is meant to express the connections between femininity and the vitality, as well as delicate grace, of flowers. Like motherhood,flowers carry within them a spirit of forbearance and tolerance that allows them to withstand the cruelties of winter and still bring forth great love and warmth when spring comes.
Closing soon:
Open Door Discourse (NARS Foundation, 5/21 – 6/18)
Guang Zhu: Aquarium of Equations #2 (HERE, 4/30 – 6/20)
Cecile Chong: Time Collision (Project Room at BRIC House, 5/21 – 6/21)
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Visit the exhibition calendar (http://ow.ly/pxe9o) for details for the following shows below. As always, check the museum or gallery’s website for hours of operation.
The School of Nature and Principle (EFA Project Space, 4/10 – 5/30)
Chien-Chi Chang: Double Happiness (inCube Arts SPACE, 5/15 – 5/30)
Open Door Discourse (NARS Foundation, 5/21 – 6/18)
Guang Zhu: Aquarium of Equations #2 (HERE, 4/30 – 6/20)
Cecile Chong: Time Collision (Project Room at BRIC House, 5/21 – 6/21)
Sung-Chih Chen: Time After Time (Gallery 456, 6/4 – 6/26)
Ciu Xiuwen (崔岫闻): Awaking of the Flesh (崔岫聞:肉身的覺醒) (Klein Sun Gallery, 5/7 – 6/27)
Wu Yuren: On Parole (吳玉仁:假釋) (Klein Sun Gallery, 5/7 – 6/27)
Su-Mei Tse: one thousand and one dreams behind us (Peter Blum Gallery, 4/24 – 6/27)
Building Stories (ATP Gallery, 5/8 – 6/27)
Zhe Zhu and Zhangbolong Liu: Vanitas/Traces 朱喆与刘张铂泷：维尼塔斯/痕迹 (Fou Gallery at Carma, 4/24 – 6/28)
Sophie Wen-shuo Yen (嚴玟鑠): Cutting the Fragrance (Hwang Gallery, 6/9 – 6/28)
Huang Rui: Language Color (Zürcher Gallery, 5/26 – 7/4)
Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera (Grey Art Gallery, 4/21 – 7/11)
New Ways of Seeing: Beyond Culture (Dorsky Gallery, 5/10 – 7/12)
Happy Together (Tina Kim Gallery, 5/15 – 7/3)
China: Through the Looking Glass (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5/7- 8/16)
The Great Ephemeral (New Museum, 5/27 – 9/6)
Water to Paper, Paint to Sky: The Art of Tyrus Wong (Museum of Chinese in America, 3/26 – 9/13)
Image: Portrait with Andy Warhol’s Mao, Photo by Andrew Shiue