This week: A musical that takes place in the Kowloon Walled City, the Asian American International Film Festival opens this coming Wednesday, a Taiwanese film from 1997, new exhibitions by local artists Heidi Lau, Pixy Yijun Liao, and Lulu Meng, an exhibition inspired by Tainan and New York, and a showcase of Taiwan’s manufacturing prowess.
In addition to the listings below, on Thursday, July 20:
An experimental duet concert at the Owl Music Parlor with Seungmin Cha and JunYi Chow who will play the Korean daegum, Chinese ruan, melodion, piano, and other electronics to explore soundscapes through improvisations.
Don’t forget Re-TROS also performs at Baby’s All Right
Coming up:
July 29 – Taiwanese bands Fire Ex, Dadado Huang + Berry j, and Sangpuy at Taiwanese Waves.
August 4 and 7 – Death Ray on Coral Island 《珊瑚岛上的死光》, China’s first sci-fi movie at MoMA
We add talks, films, performances, exhibitions, featuring or relating to Chinese, Taiwanese, diasporic artists and topics to our event and ongoing exhibition calendars as we learn of them.
We post frequently on our Facebook page. So check the page for links we share and get a heads up on events before we include them in these weekly posts. For art, images, and other instances of Chineseness we see, follow our Instagram page.
We’re looking for contributors! If you’re interested in writing an article, contributing photos or artwork to be featured with our weekly events and exhibitions listing, letting us know about an event, send a pitch at beyondchinatown@gmail.com.
UPCOMING EVENTS
1) Qing Cheng/Dark City – A young refugee girl arrives penniless and alone in what appears to be the most frightening place on earth, Qing Cheng – the Dark City. Follow Ahn’s journey as the harrowing becomes habitable, and hope and humanity triumph in a dangerous city. Based on the real-life Kowloon Walled City just outside of Hong Kong, this uniquely Chinese/American musical offers up a timely exploration of the refugee experience.
Book, music, and lyrics by contemporary American classical composer Daniel Walker who has worked with Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau, composed Marco Polo: The Last Mission, which premiered by the Shanghai Ballet Company as part of the opening festival of China’s World Expo, and arranged music for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Friday, July 21, 1 PM
Saturday, July 22, 5 PM
The Green Room 42 at Yotel, 570 Tenth Avenue
+++++
2) Dinner with the Curators – Gather around the dinner table with co-curators Audra Ang, Kian Lam Kho, Andrew Rebatta, and Herb Tam for conversations about Chinese food and identity while enjoying dishes prepared by some of the NYC-based featured chefs of MOCA’s hit exhibit, Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy, closing on September 10. Sample food by Mission Chinese Food, Xi’an Famous Foods, Nom Wah Tea Parlor, and more!
Friday, July 21, 6:30 PM
Museum of Chinese in America
+++++
3) Blue Moon 《藍月》– A “blue moon” refers to something that happens once in a lifetime or a second full moon in the same calendar month. Cuen-Shu and A-Gua, classmates who grew up together, both end up falling for Yi-Fang, a girl they met while playing softball. On a blue moon evening, the three protagonists head to the Blue Moon Cafe to untangle their love triangle. Facing a difficult choice and not knowing what she wants, how will Yi-Fang come to a decision? Blue Moon is headlined by fresh-faced actress Tarcy Su, who delivers a vivid portrayal of a city-dwelling woman’s yearning for love.
Dir. Ko I-Chen (柯一正)
1997, Taiwan, 97 min.
Thursday, July 27, 6:30 PM
Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, 1 East 42nd Street
ONGOING FILMS, SHOWS, AND EVENTS
1) Asian American International Film Festival – Now in its 40th year, this festival by Asian CineVision is the first and longest running festival the country devoted to films and about Asians and Asian Americans. This year, over 30 feature-length narrative and documentary films and nine shorts programs featuring films will be screened. The festival opens with Gook, Justin Chon’s story of the 1992 LA riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. on July 26. Hou Hsiao-hsien-produced Taiwanese film Small Talk 《日常對話》 about director Huang Hui-chen’s attempts to reveal and reconcile a painful past shared between herself and her mother A-nu, a lesbian Taoist priestess is the Centerpiece film, and Chinese film Free and Easy 《轻松+愉快》is the closing film.
The festival with also highlights four independent Asian American filmmakers who premiered their narrative coming-of-age feature films transcending identity politics in 1997 and are considered by cinema and Asian American studies scholars as part of the Asian American New Wave. Rea Tajiri (Strawberry Fields), Chris Chan Lee (Yellow), Eric Nakamura and Michael Idemoto (Sunsets), Quentin Lee and Justin Lin (Shopping for Fans) will attend screenings of their breakthrough films and join for a joint panel discussion.
About a dozen feature-length films, including Fruit Chan’s essential Made in Hong Kong 《香港製造》and Wang Jiuliang’s Plastic China 《塑料王国》, and a number of shorts by filmmakers from China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong and Chinese American filmmaker are in the line-up. We’ll have a look at them soon.
The festival runs from July 26 – August 5 at Asia Society and Village East Cinema.
+++++
2) Taiwan Excellence Product Showcase – Featuring over 60 award-winning products from Taiwan’s leading technology and innovation companies, the event will allow visitors to experience some of the latest breakthroughs in virtual reality, gaming computers, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, alternative transportation and more.
The showcase will also feature interactive VR experiences, 8 gaming stations, daily giveaways, and chances to win great prizes.
The event runs from July 27 – July 30 at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.
+++++
2) Wu Kong 《悟空传》 – China’s biggest movie of the year follows the Monkey King’s pre-Journey to the West adventures.
At AMC Empire 25
ART EXHIBITIONS
Opening and New Listed:
1) Heidi Lau: The Primordial Molder (Bronx Museum, 7/19 – 10/22) – Heidi Lau’s practice centers on the recreation of histories that have been lost to time. Painstakingly built and glazed by hand, her ceramic work is modeled after ritual objects, columns, funereal monuments, and fossilized creatures, while simultaneously infesting, deconstructing, and rebuilding them on a cellular level. Lau uses symbolic artifacts and zoomorphic ruins as symbols of the archaic and the invisible, taking inspiration from colonial architecture and tenement houses in Macau that have mostly been demolished or gentrified beyond recognition. In the process, she continuously reenacts the non-linearity and materiality of the past, molding a tactile connection to the disappearing, impossible identity of home. Colonial history, folk Taoist mythology and provincial superstitions provide essential source material through which her work explores homelessness and nostalgia.
Lau’s terrace installation at Bronx Museum, The Primordial Molder, is a continuation of her large-scale ceramic sculpture series that ruminates on the Taoist creation myth: in the primordial world, Nüwa the Snake Goddess marked the beginning of humanity by patching a giant hole in heaven with five-colored stones, using the legs of a great turtle as pillars to support the collapsed sky from the earth. The Primordial Molder is the representation of Nüwa’s form as a snake that is both anthropomorphic and architectural. Its body curls and tangles around itself to form a ring – a symbol of eternal return and the infinite life cycle.
Opening reception as part of summer season open house at the Bronx Museum on July 27, Thursday, 6 – 8 PM.
Heidi Lau, Pillars of the Earth (Modeled after Lonesome George), 2015. Glazed ceramics, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.
+++++
2) Fully Loaded: Tainan – New York 2017 (Pfizer Building, 7/20 – 9/10) – “Fully loaded” references fishing boats returning to port heavily laden, and thus by extension the traditional livelihoods of an island people. It also alludes to the well-rounded culture of those inhabiting that island.
Like New Amsterdam, Tainan in the 17th century was an outpost of Dutch influence. While the Dutch colonized all of Taiwan from 1624 to 1662, their capital there was Tainan, and to this day several forts from that era survive in the city and memorialize Dutch sway. Dutch rule over New York stretched from 1609 to 1667. And like New York, Tainan is a port.
The various artists included in this exhibition reflect different aspects of the culture of Tainan or New York, generating snapshots growing out of life experience. In addition to the stresses mentioned below, they react to fissures between male and female, between Taoist folk religion on the one hand and science and technology on the other, and the ever-present strains between rural and urban life.
+++++
3) Design by the Book: Chinese Ritual Objects and the Sanli tu (Bard Graduate Center 3/24 – 7/30) – Completed in 961 by Nie Chongyi (fl. 948–964), it is the oldest extant illustrated study of classical Chinese artifacts from musical instruments, maps, and court insignia to sacrificial jades, ceremonial dress, and mourning and funerary paraphernalia. It brings to light the significance of this long overlooked book, which served as a guide both to the material culture of the Classics and to the design of Confucian ritual paraphernalia in postclassical, imperial China. The exhibition also addresses themes that go beyond the book itself, including Confucian ritual as a means to legitimate the monarchy, the birth of antiquarian scholarship in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, Emperor Huizong’s ritual reforms, and the role of the art market in driving the reproduction of artifacts illustrated in the book.
+++++
Asia Society hosts Inspired by Zao Wou-Ki as part of a series of exhibitions that presents the work of New York City students created in response to the great artistic traditions of Asia. This year the exhibition presents student artwork inspired by the Asia Society fall 2016 exhibition No Limits: Zao Wou-Ki. The exhibition runs through August 6.
Xiaoguang Wei participates in I want to Dissolve, the first show organized by Current Curators. Opening reception on July 20, 6 – 8 PM at 81 Canal Street.
Pixy Yijun Liao is part of a group show Discursive Selves at Westbeth Gallery, which explores the contested meaning of the Self Portrait. This collection of photography and film by eleven contemporary artists reveals nuanced definitions of selfhood that acknowledge the influence of one’s social environment on one’s inner sense of identity. Opening reception on July 21, 6 – 8 PM at 55 Bethune Street, New York.
Lulu Meng will present her recent sculpture series Impression as part of Bronx Calling: The Fourth AIM Biennial , which opens at the Bronx Museum on July 27, Thursday, 6 – 8 PM.
Freddo Chen presents Close, but not touching, the inaugural show at new Soho-based gallery Biggercode. A group interdisciplinary exhibition, close, but not touching consists of artists who present or utilize modes of production that converge through the passage of time and the history of art. Taking its idea from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, this curatorial venture from James Chen and Kristen Lee will present works that echo the past in evoking certain sentiments and feelings, but within the landscape of today’s surface.
Ceramicist Heidi Lau is part of Morph, a group show at Asya Geisberg Gallery of contemporary ceramic sculpture. The artists in Morph paint expressionistically with glaze, weave in hair, inlay surfaces, squash perfect forms, recombine tchotchkes, and subvert genres heedless of strict boundaries. The exhibition runs through August 11.
We visited Drea Cofield & Ping Zheng: Summer 2017 at Nancy Margolis Gallery and was fascinated by Ping Zheng’s work on paper! Check it out before the show closes on July 29th.
+++++
Closing soon:
Lin Wang: Tenant, Tranant, Trance (Gallery Sensei, 7/18 – 7/20)
Summer Selections (Art Projects International, 6/21 – 7/22)
Shanlin Ye & KAORUKO: On the Verge (Jim Kempner Fine Art, 6/17 – 7/23)
Mountain River Jump! (山河跳) – Reality Check 《鬥法》(Sleep Center, 6/10 – 7/25)
Jennifer Wen Ma: Eight Views of Paradise Interrupted (Sandra Gering Inc, 5/11 – 7/28)
Material Mythos (Geary Contemporary, 6/22 – 7/29)
Drea Cofield & Ping Zheng: Summer 2017 (Nancy Margolis Gallery, 6/29 – 7/29)
The Cosmos of Seeds: Paintings, Sculptures, and a Chapbook “Sculptures Of Arhat” by Ye Qin Zhu (The Hand, 7/8 – 7/29)
Ye Funa: An Alternative Cinema (Metro Pictures, 7/13 – 7/30)
Design by the Book: Chinese Ritual Objects and the Sanli tu (Bard Graduate Center 3/24 – 7/30)
Nightshift (The Clemente, 7/8 – 7/31)
Sun Xun: Time Spy (Times Square, 7/1 – 7/31)
+++++
Current shows:
Visit the exhibition calendar for details for the current shows listed below. Check the museum or gallery’s website for hours of operation.
NSFW: Female Gaze (Museum of Sex, 6/21 – TBC)
Lin Wang: Tenant, Tranant, Trance (Gallery Sensei, 7/18 – 7/20)
Summer Selections (Art Projects International, 6/21 – 7/22)
Shanlin Ye & KAORUKO: On the Verge (Jim Kempner Fine Art, 6/17 – 7/23)
Mountain River Jump! (山河跳) – Reality Check 《鬥法》(Sleep Center, 6/10 – 7/25)
Jennifer Wen Ma: Eight Views of Paradise Interrupted (Sandra Gering Inc, 5/11 – 7/28)
Material Mythos (Geary Contemporary, 6/22 – 7/29)
Drea Cofield & Ping Zheng: Summer 2017 (Nancy Margolis Gallery, 6/29 – 7/29)
The Cosmos of Seeds: Paintings, Sculptures, and a Chapbook “Sculptures Of Arhat” by Ye Qin Zhu (The Hand, 7/8 – 7/29)
Ye Funa: An Alternative Cinema (Metro Pictures, 7/13 – 7/30)
Design by the Book: Chinese Ritual Objects and the Sanli tu (Bard Graduate Center 3/24 – 7/30)
Nightshift (The Clemente, 7/8 – 7/31)
Sun Xun: Time Spy (Times Square, 7/1 – 7/31)
A New Ballardian Vision (Metro Pictures x Leo Xu Projects, 6/29 – 8/4)
Ji Zhou: Real Illusion (Klein Sun Gallery, 6/22 – 8/5)
Show and Tell: Stories in Chinese Painting (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/29/16 – 8/6/17)
Hansel and Gretel (Park Avenue Armory, 6/7 – 8/6)
Close, but not touching (Biggercode, 7/27 – 8/7)
Discursive Selves (Westbeth Gallery, 7/11 – 8/21)
Morph (Asya Geisberg Gallery, 6/22 – 8/11)
Body, Self, Society – Chinese Performance Photography of the 1990s (The Walther Collection, 4/14 – 8/19)
Jennifer Wen Ma: Entry Niches (Van Doren Waxter, 5/11 – 8/25)
Informality (group show with Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong, NYFA Gallery, 5/4 – 9/1)
Transitions: Dong Yuan, Lam Tung-pang and Lao Tongli (Chambers Fine Art, 6/22 – 9/2)
Chow: Making the Chinese American Restaurant (Museum of Food and Drink Lab, 11/11/16 – 9/3/17)
Fully Loaded: Tainan – New York 2017 (Pfizer Building, 7/20 – 9/10)
Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy: Stories of Chinese Food and Identity in America (Museum of Chinese in America, 10/6/2016 – 9/10/17)
Infinite Compassion: Avalokiteshvara in Asian Art (Staten Island Museum, 10/22/16 – 9/25/17)
Ian Cheng (MoMA PS1, 4/9 – 9/25)
Cinnabar: The Chinese Art of Carved Lacquer, 14th – 19th Century (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6/25/16 – 10/9/17)
From the Imperial Theater: Chinese Opera Costumes of the 18th and 19th Centuries (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6/25/16 – 10/9/17)
Colors of the Universe: Chinese Hardstone Carvings (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6/25/16 – 10/9/17)
Dreams of the Kings: A Jade Suit for Eternity, Treasures of the Han Dynasty from Xuzhou (China Institute, 5/25 – 11/12/17)
Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong – Constellation (Seward Park, June 2017 – June 2018)
Lead image: Weird mask shop in Jiufen by Alexander Synaptic. Licensed through Creative Commons.