This week: Taiwan’s hottest hip hop group; kunqu opera in Flushing; a environmental film featuring a Taiwanese American performance artist;a tribute to poet Xu Zhimo; one of Asia’s biggest bands, Mayday; and more…
Coming up:
November 24 and 25: CD release parties for electro-rock band The Either
November 26: Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day 《牯嶺街少年殺人事件》
November 27: A talk about the expansion of knowledge about China in the first half of the 20th century
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 us on Instagram.
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) Nightingale, Not the Only Voice 《夜莺不是唯一的歌喉》– Nightingale, Not the Only Voice follows the lives of three artists, including the film’s director, on their shared journey through real and psychological oppression to self-discovery. Tang Danhong examines her past—particularly her relationship with her parents—and looks at the painful, formative moments that inform her current psychological state, her life, and her art.
Dir. Tang Danhong (唐丹鸿)
China, 2000, 180 min.
Mandarin with English subtitles
Part of the film festival Turn It On: China on Film, 2000–2017 co-curated by Ai Weiwei and Wang Fen
Friday, November 17, 12:40 PM
Guggenheim Museum
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2) Fall for Kunqu – Fusing together poetry, music, and story in a mesmerizing live performance, Kunqu is a classic and elegant form of traditional Chinese theatre, included on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage. Carefully curated by Kunqu Society, the program showcases a colorful and entertaining selection of music, singing, and dramatic pieces from the Kunqu repertoire to celebrate the season of fall. Subtitles in English.
Saturday, November 18, 1:30 PM
Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Boulevard, Flushing
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3) Face the Earth 《肉身搏天》– Face the Earth puts viewers right next to performance artist Chin Chih Yang (楊金池) as 30,000 aluminum cans are dumped on his head to call our attention to the vast amount of waste each of us creates – the average person uses and discards 30,000 cans in their lifetime! Sit alongside Yang and passersby in New York City’s storied Union Square, on a giant block of ice and ponder the possibility that the polar ice cap will be gone by 2050. Watch the public participate with the artist to help him create his Giant Can Family at the Contemporary Art Museum of Taipei. Learn how he makes sturdy whole cloth out of discarded potato chip bags and gain insight into how each of us can face the earth and contribute to her resuscitation.
Dir. Ming-Chuan Huang
2017, Taiwan, 85 min.
Followed by Q&A with Ming-Chuan Huang and artist Chin Chih Yang. New York premiere.
Saturday, November 18, 2 PM (RSVP requested)
Queens Museum
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4) 店面 Residency: Make & Film Shadow Puppets – W.O.W. 店面 Artist-in-Residence Emily Mock leads a papercutting workshop on Saturday and a shadow puppet workshop on Sunday. The works from the workshops will be incorporated into a month-long window display at the Wing On Wo & Co. storefront window.
Saturday, November 18, 5 PM
Sunday, November 19, 5 PM
Wing On Wo & Co. basement studio, 26 Mott Street
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5) Mayday Life Tour – Nicknamed “The Chinese Beatles” by The Washington Post, Taiwanese rock band, Mayday, has sold over 21 million concert tickets and won the “Best Band” award four times at the Golden Melody Awards.
Saturday, November 18, 8 PM
Barclays Center, 620 Atlantic Avenue
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6) Commemoration of 120th Anniversary of Xu Zhimo’s (徐志摩) Birth – To mark the 120th anniversary of the birth of Xu Zhimo, one of the most renowned romantic poets of 20th-century Chinese literature, the Renwen Society will present a major event to commemorate the literary giant. The event will include remarks on Xu Zhimo’s status in modern Chinese literature and readings of Xu’s poems. Dr. Tony Hsu, Xu Zhimo’s grandson, will speak on his newly published biography of his grandfather, Chasing the Modern. A book signing will follow the event.
This event is jointly presented with the Confucius Institute at Pace University and will be held at Pace University.
Registration is closed, but livestream is available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYloBzl4EWCXn0pXIOa9SOg/live
Sunday, November 19, 2 PM
Bianco Room, Pace University, 3 Spruce Street
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7) Think!Chinatown Community Day – Artist led tours of the exhibition The Inscrutable Chinese: A Series of Paintings by Homer Shew in English and docent led tours in Chinese will be from 3 -6 PM. A reception will begin at 6 PM and a bi-lingual poetry reading will be presented at 7 PM.
Sunday, November 19, 3- 8 PM
384 Broadway
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8) Jia Jia – The Taiwanese singer-songwriter of Bunun and Puyuma decent plays New York. Read more about her here.
Sunday, November 19, 7 PM
Gramercy Theatre, 127 E. 23rd Street
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9) New Asia Chamber Music Society with Zhang Fang, Piano – New Asia CMS presents and collaborates with Chinese pianist Fang Zhang (張放)
Dean of the Music Department at the Renmin University of China. The program includes:
Dong-Qing Fang – Drunken Master 《醉八仙》
Wantong Jiang – Poetry with Silent Mountain 《空山賦》
Claude Debussy – String Quartet in G minor
Johannes Brahms – Piano Quinet in F minor
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10) KAO!INC. World Tour – KAO!INC., the legendary hip-hop label from Taiwan makes its first North America appearance. All of the artists from KAO!INC., including the label’s founding artist Soft Lipa, the king of underground rap world GorDoN aka Dr.Paper, the multi-talent representative Yinghung aka DJ Didilong, and the popular hip-hop newbie Leo Wang will all be participating in the KAO!INC. World Tour showcase.
Wednesday, November 22, 7 PM
Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th Street
ONGOING FILMS, SHOWS, AND EVENTS
1) Four Seas Players Presents Proof – The Four Seas Players continues their 48th season with the recipient of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Proof, a two-act drama written by David Auburn. The production is directed by Lai Yee Fung with a cast of four, to be performed in Chinese with English subtitles.
On the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, Catherine, a troubled young woman, has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, a famous mathematician. Now, following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions; the arrival of her estranged sister, Claire; and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father’s who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind. Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father’s madness–or genius–has she inherited?
November 11 – 19
Abrons Arts Center – Underground Theater Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street, NY 10002
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2) A Deal – Like many new upper-middle-class Chinese families, Mr. and Mrs. Li are proud to give their only daughter a life they could only dream of (an Ivy League degree in art and an apartment in Manhattan), until they realize she’s turning into a dangerous stranger.
A Deal is a dark comedy that features a Chinese family’s home buying journey in New York in winter 2015, a time of increased real estate property ownership by overseas Chinese and a sharp decline in the value of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar. It reveals the ideological conflicts between the East and the West in contemporary society by tracking a little stream of the global cash flow.
This is the first Off-Broadway production for international known playwright Zhu Yi and A Deal will simultaneously tour China in Mandarin.
November 15 – December 10
Urban Stages, 259 W 30th St.
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3) M. Butterfly – The first Broadway revival of David Henry Hwang’s Tony Award-winning play stars Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe Award winner Clive Owen as Rene Gallimard, Jin Ha as Song Liling and is directed by Tony Award winner Julie Taymor. M. Butterfly, charts the scandalous romance between a married French diplomat and a mysterious Chinese opera singer – a remarkable love story of international espionage and personal betrayal. Their 20-year relationship pushed and blurred the boundaries between male and female, east and west – while redefining the nature of love and the devastating cost of deceit.
talks about how the play has always been more than the salacious story on which it is based and how it remains provocative through 30 years of shifting social views and geopolitics
Through February 25, 2018
Cort Theatre, 138 W. 48th Street
ART EXHIBITIONS
Group Shows and Local Artists:
Gallery 456 presents two person show The Mind’s Movement, an exhibition of paintings by the Icelandic artist Valgardur Gunnarsson and New York artist Ting Yih. The show tracks down the varying states of mind of these artists and the creative process. Both artists employ a similar technique of layering paint on paint, color over another color, to form a wealth of densely textured background.
Breaking the Cocoon at Grady Alexis Gallery showcases works by Chenlin Cai, Yinjie Deng, Dongze Huo, Sarah Shinhyo Kim, Juna Law, Michael Sheng, Shanlin Ye, and Longfei Zhang.
Wang Xu is one of the artists at The 2017 Socrates Annual. The Socrates Annual – formerly known as The Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition – is an annual exhibition of new public art that addresses the most urgent issues of today.
Fina Yeung will exhibit her mixed-media cardboard installations at ARTISTS CO-OP at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning which runs rom September 21 – November 11.
Chinese Indonesian artist FX Harsono is one of the artists in Asia Society’s After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History which runs from September 8, 2017 – January 21, 2018. A frequent theme in his work is about being part of the ethnic Chinese minority in the country. From the exhibition page:
Fou Gallery shows the fecund botany-themed works of Michael Eade which invoke a certain Chinese aesthetic in Realms of the Soil.
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Opening and Newly Listed:
1) Spirited Creatures: Animal Representations in Chinese Silk and Lacquer (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/21/17 – 7/22/18) – This exhibition explores how real and mythical animals—such as the dragon, unicorn, phoenix, lion, ox, and butterfly—are depicted on luxury materials of late imperial China. Presenting 20 textiles and 50 lacquers spanning several hundred years—from the 13th to the 19th century—the exhibition highlights the imagery on a wide range of objects: dragon robes, rank badges, and tapestry panels for interior decoration, as well as many different types of lacquer vessels from imperial workshops. The objects are drawn exclusively from The Met collection, and some have not been on display for several decades.
Among the works on view are two carved red-lacquer pieces from the early 15th century: dish with two birds and peonies has a lavish image treatment typical of the period; and sutra box with dragons amid clouds, which depicts a sinewy dragon, is representative of the elegant boxes produced for use both at the court and as diplomatic gifts, particularly to Tibet. Also of note is a late 19th- to early 20th-century woman’s informal robe covered with embroidered butterflies.
Rank badge with qilin, China, 19th century. Image courtesy of the Met.
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2）Brook Hsu: Panic Angel (Deli Gallery, 11/17 – 12/22) – This new body of work brings together seemingly disparate stories and life events of fact, fiction and myth, in the form of paintings, sculptural clothing, and digitally printed fabrics. Inhabited by an unusual cast of characters from bunnies, butterflies, and the ancient Greek god Pan to her mother and Kim Kardashian, the artist continues her focus on the symbolic, the sentimental, the erotic, and the spiritual. Brook Hsu (b. 1987) grew up in Oklahoma. Hsu received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2010 and her MFA from Yale University, New Haven in 2016.
Opening reception: Friday, November 17, 7 PM – 10 PM, 10-16 46th Ave., Long Island City
Brook Hsu, Antique, 2017.
Oil on panel
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Closing soon:
Wei Xiaoguang: Durable Pixels (Sleep Center, 10/27 – 11/17, 2017)
Luyang Asia Character Setting Show (Special Special, 11/10 – 11/24)
East of Que Village: The Ends of Nature (The Walther Collection, 10/6 – 11/25)
Closer to the Beautiful World (Klein Sun Gallery, 10/12 – 11/25)
ACAW THINKING PROJECTS Pop-Up: Yang Xin (Beijing) (Klein Sun Gallery, 10/12 – 11/25)
Current shows:
Visit the exhibition calendar for details for the current shows listed below. Check the museum’s or gallery’s website for hours of operation.
Wei Xiaoguang: Durable Pixels (Sleep Center, 10/27 – 11/17, 2017)
Luyang Asia Character Setting Show (Special Special, 11/10 – 11/24)
East of Que Village: The Ends of Nature (The Walther Collection, 10/6 – 11/25)
Closer to the Beautiful World (Klein Sun Gallery, 10/12 – 11/25)
ACAW THINKING PROJECTS Pop-Up: Yang Xin (Beijing) (Klein Sun Gallery, 10/12 – 11/25)
The Mind’s Movement (Gallery 456, 11/10 – 12/8)
Guo Hongwei: Plastic Heaven (Chambers Fine Art, 11/16 – 12/9)
Li Jun: Zi Jie at East Lake (ACAW x Mana Contemporary, 10/15 – 12/15)
Song Dong: Eating the City (ACAW x Mana Contemporary, 10/15 – 12/15)
Brook Hsu: Panic Angel (Deli Gallery, 11/17 – 12/22)
Uncharted Waters (Boers-Li Gallery, 10/6 – 12/23)
Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (Guggenheim Museum, 10/6/17 – 1/8/18)
Ai Weiwei: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (multiple sites NYC, 10/12/17 – 2/1/18)
Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake, 2009 – 2017 (Queens Museum, 9/17/17 – 2/18/18)
chin(A)frica: an interface (NYU, Institute of Fine Arts, 10/27/17 – 2/18/18)
FOLD: Golden Venture Paper Sculptures (Museum of Chinese in America, 10/5 /17 – 3/25/18)
In Focus: An Assembly of Gods (Asia Society Museum, 9/26/17 – 3/25/18)
Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong: Constellation (Seward Park, June 2017 – June 2018)
Spirited Creatures: Animal Representations in Chinese Silk and Lacquer (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/21/17 – 7/22/18)
Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8/26/17 – 1/9/19)
Lead image: Bike sharing lot in New Taipei City. Photo by Flickr user Andre M. Licensed through Creative Commons