If you’re like us, you don’t make it to Queens Museum and Flushing very often, but this is the weekend you’ll want to go. Opening on Sunday is Queens Museum’s retrospective on Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu (张宏图), the “most influential Chinese artist you’ve never heard of”, known for his “political pop” paintings that feature Chairman Mao and landscape paintings that combine elements of Eastern and Western aesthetics to examine the relationship between the two spheres.
While you’re at the museum, it’ll be a great time to check out inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival – Architectural Landscapes: SEA in the Forefront and the related film screenings that examine how natural spaces are transformed into urban landscapes and how gaps are created in the cultural and social legacies in various countries in Southeast Asia. You might also notice that the New York State Pavilion, one of the last remaining World’s Fair structures around the United States got a spiffy new paint job. A little further in Flushing, award-winning chefs from Tainan offer an opportunity to taste street food from Taiwan’s southern city.
What else this week? Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin opens at IFC Center, a reading discussion about socialist sci-fi led by David Borgonjon continues, the story of early Chinese immigrants to the US told through dance, a walking tour of Chinatown that highlights the work of an early Chinese American architect, films about Fred Ho and Asian food across the United States, and lots of openings for new exhibitions by Chinese artists.
Seven films from the recent Cinema on the Edge series which brought films from the Beijing Independent Film Festival to NYC, are available on MUBI until October 23. Sign and up and watch for free!
Coming up:
China Remix, a short documentary that follows three Africans in Guangzhou and Double Happiness, a film that visits a perfect replica of an Austrian mountain village in Huizhou, Guangdong Province screen at the Margaret Mead Film Festival on October 23.
inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival presents performances and talk by musicans and sound artists Audrey Chen, C. Spencer Yeh, Hao Ni, and Yi-Xin Tong on October 24.
Columbia’s Weatherhead Institute hosts talks about public protests and Xu Xing’s independent films on October 29.
Talks about how China’s art was saved in the earliest 20th century, China’s millenials and golf are also on the horizon.
Tan Dun’s Water Passion After St. Matthew will have two performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 14.
Taiwan’s percussive U Theatre bangs at BAM for three performances from November 19 – 21.
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.
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Coming up this week…
1) South of Gold Mountain – In 1850, news of “The California Gold Rush” reached southern China before most Americans had learned of it and thus began an exodus of 300,000 Chinese immigrants to “Gold Mountain.” South Of Gold Mountain draws from rich oral histories, treasured images, official and private documentation of Chinese settlers lured to America by the promise of gold and a prosperous life. With the support of Chinese American community heritage museums and family associations in the US, three years of extensive research and in-depth interviews were conducted with immigrants and their descendants, inspiring this insightful production by HT Chen & Dancers.
The similarity between village life in China and living in southern US communities was evident as the immigrants were helped by those arriving before them, to endure daily hardships and adjust to the cultural challenges of their adoptive country. Discrimination, racism, and physical violence were prevalent. To survive, they became deeply connected despite rural isolation. These Chinese residents helped build America by working on railroads, levees, and plantations, and as grocers.
HT Chen & Dancers’ production memorializes the struggles of thousands of Chinese Americans and their legacy. It acknowledges generations of descendants and blended communities now thriving across the US. Blending a contemporary sound score, traditional Chinese music, and Deep South Blues, this vital dance-theater celebration of the first Chinese American settlements is an enlightening story of immigration, civil rights, and assimilation.
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2) PROVOCATEUR: Fred Ho’s Legacy During a Time of Conformity – Filmmaker Steven De Castro will screen his award-winning documentary film Fred Ho’s Last Year.
What does it take for Asian American artists, mostly ignored, to make their mark? Controversial activist and avant garde composer Fred Ho, who passed away in April 2014, fought to overturn every field which he entered, striving to question their premises and holding others to the rise up to the principles they espoused. Although he adamantly promoted his arguments, he was well known for radically changing his position. He developed over many years unquestionable achievements of provocation in the fields of politics, Asian American identity, and music, with very little separation among the three. Always controversial, Fred’s music, writings, and example are an inspiration for friends and critics alike.
Friday, October 16, 6 PM
Asian American / Asian Research Institute – CUNY, 25 West 43rd Street
Free
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3) Off the Menu – Directed by award-winning filmmaker Grace Lee, Off the Menu: Asian America takes us on a road trip across the US—from Honolulu, Hawai‘i to Oak Creek, Wisconsin to New York, New York—in an exploration of how family, history, faith, and geography shape our relationships to food and our communities. Lee, producer Eurie Chung, food scholar Krishnendu Ray (NYU Food Studies), chef Jonathan Wu and his partner Wilson Tang (whose innovative restaurant Fung Tu is featured in the film) join us for a post-screening discussion, moderated by film scholar Chi-hui Yang.
Friday, October 16, 7 PM
NYU Cantor Film Center, Theater 101, 36 East 8th Street
Free
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4) MINIMAX (abastraction for lack of a better determination) Opening Reception – Opening for a group art show which includes the sculptural works of artist Fu Xiao
Friday, October 16, 7 PM
Bullet Space, 292 E. 3rd Street
Free
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5) Sui Zhen – Sui Zhen is the alias of Melbourne-based artist Becky Sui Zhen. Following her recent electronic experimentation with ethereal techno-pop and minimal down-tempo 808-lead tracks, her new LP marks a return to more traditional vocal-led pop songs.
Expect to be immersed in the larger narratives that surround Becky’s work, from the banal pastel dystopia of her Infinity Street video to the invention of Susan, an alter ego who manifests in the forthcoming single “Take It All Back” – these colourful, surreal and staged landscapes allow Becky’s take on pop music to sit within its own uncanny terrain.
Friday October 16, 9 PM (CMJ Showcase)
Niagara, 112 Avenue A
Ticket information unavailable at press time
Saturday, October 17, 2 PM (Aussie BBQ CMJ Showcase)
The Delancey, 168 Delancey Street
Ticket information unavailable at press time
Saturday, October 17, 8 PM (Drunken Piano Showcase)
The Shop, 234 Starr Street, Brooklyn
Ticket information unavailable at press time
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6) The Scientific Image: A Red Sci-fi Reading Group, Pt. 2 – Their concerns are as broad as the world once was red: science fiction, cruising the ruins, truth and lies in the news, and the way that paint dries. How come the unrealistic can be so real, sometimes? Many of us came up after the promise (or threat) of socialism had faded. With this distance, we can recognize a realism that is neither description of what’s happened already, nor the expression of some far-off fantasy, but an artful manipulation of the immediate future.
Saturday, October 17, 2 PM
Momenta Art, 56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn
Free
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7) Ying Dai – Magic Cube Opening Reception (Asian Fusion Gallery, 10/17 – 10/24) – Born in Sichuan and trained in traditional calligraphy and painting since she was five, artist Ying Dai will have her first solo show in New York. A seasoned expert in commercial markets in China, Ying Dai also uses art to express her inner self. Magic Cube features abstract paintings informed by Chinese local religion. Her works explore the relationship of form and color, creating shimmering floating rectangular blocks of color that breakthrough geometric constraints and in some forms invoke traditional landscape painting.
Saturday, October 17, 4 PM
Asian Fusion Gallery, 15 E. 40th Street, 12th Floor
Free. RSVP to kindlyart[at]foxmail.com
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8) “Mirage” at Shorts: Simulated Presents, Projected Futures – Screening as part of Shorts: Simulated Presents, Projected Future showcase Yaya Xu’s short film “Mirage” explores the essence of memory and its significance in our lives. It shows the serendipitous convergence of our memories in the formation of a man’s body. Everything he saw became part of him. Our memories are more often than not unstable and fluid retellings of past events that are presented through subjective interpretations. This makes them very inaccurate depictions of our pasts. Meanwhile, it is these fluid and inaccurate memories that make up our lives. In this short film, memories are illusions in a novel of one’s own creation. The truth behind these stories is fragile and easily lost.
Sunday, October 18, 1 PM
Kellen Auditorium, The New School, 66 5th Avenue, New York
Free
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9) Walking Tour: Poy Gum Lee’s Chinatown – See what Chinatown looked like in 1963, at the time of the completion of the Pagoda Theatre that used to be on East Broadway. Guest curator of Chinese Style: Rediscovering the Architecture of Poy Gum Lee, 1923-1968, Kerri Culhane leads a walking tour of Chinatown that traces architect Poy Gum Lee’s life and highlights his work and influence on the architecture of Chinatown.
Sunday, October 1, 1 PM
Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street
$15/Adult, $12/Student & Senior; $8/MOCA member
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10) An Evening of Chinese Theater – Chinese American Arts Council brings an afternoon of enjoyment of various Peking Opera classics featuring exceptional actors including Chunnuan Liu, Yu-Xia Liu and Qin-Yin Yue.
On the program are: Farewell My Concubine 《霸王別姬-舞劍》, Song Jiang Murder – WuLong Mansion , Havoc in Heaven 《孫悟空大鬧天宮》
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11) inToAsia: TBA Festival 2015 – Southeast Asian Screening Program Looped Shorts
Two screening programs. The first, curated by Loredana Pazzini-Paraccinani includes:
“Utama” – Every Name in History is I by HO tzu nyen (b. 1976, Singapore)
Untitled – Khvay Samnang (b. 1982, Cambodia)
The second, Cause Commune (Common Cause), is curated by Carol Ying Hua Lu
“Summer Vacation” by Bo Kyung Suh, Korea
“Four Wax Cones” by Chung Wen Hsuan,
“David’ by Guan Xiao
“Karl Marx in 2013” by Liu Ding
“Sorry for the Inconvenience” by Manny Montelibano
“Trapped Words” by Merio Koizumi
“Nighless ver 1.1” by Yuchiro Tamura
Sunday, October 18, 3 PM
Queens Museum
Free
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12) Zhang Hongtu – Opening Reception – Opening reception for the exhibitions Zhang Hongtu and Catalyst: New Projects by Meredith James, Kameelah Rasheed, and Casey Tang.
3:30-4pm: Exhibition Play on Zhang Hongtu’s piece Ping Pong Mao with Tal Leibovitz with Estee Ackerman
Leibovitz has won the Gold Medal in the Para Pan Am games and is Queens resident. Estee Ackerman is now ranked 6th for Cadet girls (15 years and under) for table tennis in the United States. They will demonstrate their skills on Ping Pong Mao, Zhang Hongtu’s signature piece in which an image of Chairman Mao has been cut out of a ping pong table, as well as a conventional table. Leibovitz will also announce an upcoming Ping Pong Mao table tennis competition on November 21, 2015 in which he will act as Master of Ceremonies.
4pm: Zhang Hongtu Gallery Tour with exhibition curator Luchia Meihua Lee.
Sunday, October 18, 3 PM
Queens Museum
Free
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13) Taocheng Wang – Massage Near Me Opening Reception – “After Lisa found out my age, she burst into laughter and stopped: ‘Oh my dear, you can be my auntie now! I really don’t understand you. I don’t get it. I feel … I feel that you are so alone, almost like a female version of the Himalayas … I mean … here and now, Yang, Lucy, we all have relationships and love … and you are so beautiful …. your life would be much easier if you had a boyfriend who could help you out … do you know that? You should really think about it. Everything that I’m striving for is a settled down life: a nice house, a nice country, a nice man, nice money … I don’t get you, Tao! Thirty-four years old and you still do massage with us?'”
Sunday, October 18, 6 PM
Company Gallery, 88 Eldridge Street, 5th Floor
Free
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14) MOCATALKS: Is there a “Right” Way to Live in a Home?: Re-seeing the American House – The single family detached house with a manicured front lawn is synonymous with the American domestic landscape. Maintaining a perfectly mowed lawn became the suburban code of conduct and an American status symbol. For the Chinese casino workers living in the suburban Connecticut neighborhood adjacent to Mohegan Sun, these front lawns have become places to grow vegetables, socialize, park cars, hang laundry, and even dry fish. Guest curator of SUB URBANISMS: Casino Urbanization, Chinatowns, and the Contested American Landscape, Stephen Fan, unpacks the origins and implications of these interventions to the suburban single family house and what they mean to our prevailing norms of beauty, order, and socio-cultural ideals of home.
Thursday, October 22, 6:30 PM
Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street
$12/Adult; $7/Student & Senior; Free/MOCA Members
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15) Songs of a Golden Age: High Tang Poetry #3 – Concluding his inaugural lecture series at China Institute’s new home, Ben Wang, Senior Lecturer of Language and Humanities of China Institute and an award-winning translator, will introduce the Tang dynasty and the lives and works of these four poets. Poems in their original Chinese texts will be studied character by character to give an in-depth understanding and a full appreciation of their profundity and beauty. The relationship between classical Chinese poetry, music, painting and major schools of thought will be explored, with comparative points of interest made between Chinese and English poetry.
This lecture will be conducted in English. No previous knowledge of the Chinese language is required.
Thursday, October 22, 6: 30 PM
Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street
$25/Members; $30/Non-members
Ongoing Films and Shows
1) The Assassin 《刺客聶隱娘》 – A wuxia like no other, The Assassin is set in the waning years of the Tang Dynasty when provincial rulers are challenging the power of the royal court. Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi), who was exiled as a child so that her betrothed could make a more politically advantageous match, has been trained as an assassin for hire. Her mission is to destroy her former fiancé (Chang Chen). But worry not about the plot, which is as old as the jagged mountains and deep forests that bear witness to the cycles of power and as elusive as the mists that surround them. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s art is in the telling. The film is immersive and ephemeral, sensuous and spare, and as gloriously beautiful in its candle-lit sumptuous red and gold decor as Hou’s 1998 masterpiece, Flowers of Shanghai. As for the fight scenes, they’re over almost before you realize they’ve happened, but they will stay in your mind’s eye forever.
Opens at IFC Center October 15.
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2) Savoring Taiwan Cuisine Festival – Taiwan Tourism Bureau invites award-winning chefs from Tainan for a five-day festival that offers a set menu of Taiwanese street foods from Taiwan’s southern city.
Friday, October 16 – Tuesday, October 20
Brasserie du Dragon Restaurant at the Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel, 135-20 39th Avenue, Flushing
$39.95/per person
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3) 7th Annual Marco Polo Festival – Each year the Marco Polo Festival brings together families and friends for an exciting, entertaining week of music, festivities and food from both the Italian and Chinese community. The festival invokes the story of the Silk Road, and interprets the story of the encounter between the famed Venetian merchant-traveler, Marco Polo (1254-1324), and the innovative Mongolian ruler Kublai Khan (1215- 1294), as a parallel of the historic encounter and lived experiences of the Chinese & Italian immigrants on Mott and Mulberry Streets during America’s most important period of immigrant history.
To illuminate the common heritage and shared future of two of New York City’s most iconic immigrant communities, Two Bridges Neighborhood Council spearheaded the successful nomination of the Chinatown & Little Italy Historic District to the State and National Register of Historic Places in 2009. To date, the district remains New York City’s only National Register Historic District that recognizes two unique cultural communities.
Programming includes traditional Chinese & Italian Opera, folk dances, contemporary Chinese & Italian instrumental performances, and a pop-up Silk Road Museum featuring artifacts collected by Denis during his Emmy-nominated, acclaimed documentary film, “In The Footsteps of Marco Polo”.
Saturday, October 17, 11 AM – 3 PM
Mott Street – Grand Street
Free
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4) Goodbye Mr. Loser 《夏洛特烦恼》– Comedians Shen Teng and Mai Li star in this film adaptation of the very popular Mainland theater play following the story of a middle-aged loser who finds himself magically transported back to his high school years, enabling him to fix all his life’s mistakes.
Opens at AMC Empire 25 on October 9
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5) Lost in Hong Kong 《港囧》– In this sequel to China’s second highest-grossing movie of all time and a blockbuster in its own right, Lost in Thailand, A mid-aged mainland Chinese bra designer (Xu Zheng) takes his baby-crazy wife (Zhao Wei) and DVD-pirating brother-in-law (Bao Bei’er) to Hong Kong, ostensibly on a sight-seeing trip, but really wishes to use this opportunity to secretly meet his old flame (Du Juan). Never did he imagine he would be embroiled in a murder investigation.
Variety says “Trading the earlier film’s goofy fish-out-of-water gags for robust action acrobatics and fail-safe family drama, the laffer induces the warm-and-fuzzies as an ode to Hong Kong cinema and its role in mainland Gen-Xers’ sentimental coming of age.”
Opened at AMC Empire 25 on September 25.
Exhibitions
Just added and opening
1) Ying Dai – Magic Cube (Asian Fusion Gallery, 15 E. 40th Street, 12th Floor, 10/17 – 10/24) – Born in Sichuan and trained in traditional calligraphy and painting since she was five, artist Ying Dai will have her first solo show in New York. A seasoned expert in commercial markets in China, Ying Dai also uses art to express her inner self. The exhibition “Magic Cube” will feature her abstract paintings that were affected by Chinese local religion. Her works explore the relationship of form and color, creating shimmering floating rectangular blocks of color that breakthrough geometric constraints and in some forms invoke traditional landscape painting.
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2) Yu Lik Wai – It’s a Bright Guilty World (WhiteBox, 10/8 – 11/8) – WhiteBox and the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) are pleased to present the first solo exhibition in New York of Yu Lik Wai, one of the most renowned filmmakers and cinematographers working today. This co-presentation of two Lower East Side/Chinatown cultural institutions will feature a recent series of photographic prints, and a 3-channel video holographic installation titled Flux (2008) by the Hong Kong-born, Beijing-based artist, who has collaborated with directors Jia Jiangke, Ann Hui, Wong Kar-Wai and Lou Ye, among others. His feature films include Neon Goddesses (1996), Love Will Tear Us Apart (1999) and Plastic City (2008). The exhibition is curated by Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at MOCA, and Juan Puntes, Artistic Director at WhiteBox.
For years, Yu’s photography has been homologous to his filmmaking, and he joins the likes of Wim Wenders and Chris Marker as great auteur directors whose imagination extends into symbiotic forms and media in addition to narrative film. Yu’s photography, invariably informed by his existentialist narratives and charismatic cinematographic instincts, is reinforced by his masterful use of intense chromatic saturation, high contrast lighting, and unwavering dynamic framing.
Yu has been drawn to the empty, desolate built environments that mark much of China’s contemporary urban landscape. It is out of these abject and decaying vessels that he has created paradoxical noirish images: the sublime mixed with implied violence, dreamlike fantasy depicted with a documentary style bluntness. In this sense, his photographic work relates to artists such as Cao Fei, whose subject is also the frequent isolation and occasional absurdity of life in contemporary urban China.
Yu Lik Wai explains: “Over the years, I have been taking photos of empty spaces: dysfunctional apartments, abandoned factories and urban peripheries. By contemplating these desolate city fabrics, a weird fixation developed in my mind: Is there any possible kind of latent “existence” hidden inside my images? Since then, I was absorbed by the idea of reinventing imaginary human traces belonging to these barren locations.”
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3) MINIMAX (abastraction for lack of a better determination) (Bullet Space, 292 E. 3rd Street, 10/16 – 11/22) – Artist Fu Xiao sculptural works will be part of this group show.
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4) Lee Mingwei – Sonic Bloom (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/30 – 11/8) – “May I give you a song?” This question is at the heart of artist Lee Mingwei’s interactive performance work, Sonic Blossom (2015). In the Met’s Modern/Contemporary and Asia Galleries, singers from Manhattan School of Music will approach Museum visitors at random with the query. If your answer is “yes,” the vocalist will perform a Schubert lied. Mingwei compares the sporadic performances to “the folding and unfolding of a ‘Sonic Blossom.'”
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5) Chinese American Arts Council 40th Anniversary Show (Gallery 456, 10/30 – 12/4) – Curated by Shiou-ping Liao and Chen-ping Dawn as the executor, Chinese American Art Council revisits ten artists whom it has exhibited: Benrei Huang, Chen Ping Dawn , Danqing Chen, Jenny Chen, Lin Shih Pao, Ma Ho, Marlene Tseng Yu, Shida Kuo, Shiou-Ping Liao, and Zhe Chuang.
Closing soon:
Wang Dongling (王冬龄) – New Works 《新作》 (Chambers Fine Art, 9/12 – 10/24)
Ying Dai – Magic Cube (Asian Fusion Gallery, 15 E. 40th Street, 12th Floor, 10/17 – 10/24)
Face to Face (Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, 9/10 – 10/24)
inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival – Retina of the Unconscious I (The Sylvia Wald + Po Kim Gallery, 10/1 – 10/24)
inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival – Retina of the Unconscious II (inCube Arts SPACE, 10/2 – 10/24)
inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival – Architectural Landscapes: SEA in the Forefront (Queens Museum 10/3 – 10/31)
Willie Yao – 2 Solo Exhibition (Carma Restaurant, 9/9 – 10/31)
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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.
Wang Dongling (王冬龄) – New Works 《新作》 (Chambers Fine Art, 9/12 – 10/24)
Ying Dai – Magic Cube (Asian Fusion Gallery, 15 E. 40th Street, 12th Floor, 10/17 – 10/24)
Face to Face (Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, 9/10 – 10/24)
inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival – Retina of the Unconscious I (The Sylvia Wald + Po Kim Gallery, 10/1 – 10/24)
inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival – Retina of the Unconscious II (inCube Arts SPACE, 10/2 – 10/24)
inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival – Architectural Landscapes: SEA in the Forefront (Queens Museum 10/3 – 10/31)
Willie Yao – 2 Solo Exhibition (Carma Restaurant, 9/9 – 10/31)
Lee Mingwei – Sonic Bloom (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/30 – 11/8)
Yu Lik Wai – It’s a Bright Guilty World (WhiteBox, 10/8 – 11/8)
Chen Wenbo (陈文波): The Fat Years《盛世华年》– (Klein Sun Gallery, 10/14 – 11/14)
MINIMAX (abastraction for lack of a better determination) (Bullet Space, 292 E. 3rd Street, 10/16 – 11/22)
Chinese American Arts Council 40th Anniversary Show (Gallery 456, 10/30 – 12/4)
“Who is My Neighbor? NYC” (Walls-Ortiz Gallery and Center, 9/12 – 12/8)
Body Politics (Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 10/15 – 12/11)
SUB URBANISMS: Casino Urbanization, Chinatowns, and the Contested American Landscape (Museum of Chinese in America, 9/24 – 1/31/16)
Chinese Style: Rediscovering the Architecture of Poy Gum Lee, 1923-1968 (Museum of Chinese in America, 9/24/15 – 1/31/16)
Zhang Hongtu (Queens Museum, 10/18/15 – 2/28/16)
Lead image – 魔方山水1 – Ying Dai, 34 x 60 cm