2016 was a strange year for hip-hop. It was at once the pinnacle of the slurred, codeine-soaked trap music that rose in popularity around 2011 as well as a huge resurgence of boom-bap. Boom-bap is essentially the polar opposite of theRead more…
Tseng Kwong Chi: Exposing the Power of Perception
Block Museum’s exhibition “Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera” is a collection of the photographs of a photographer-performer Tseng Kwong Chi. Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-1990) is well-known for his photograph that juxtaposes the East and the West and isRead more…
Blue is for Jeans
Stanchion-less, frame-less, cover-less, case-less hangs the Traveling Memorial Quilt in the Block Museum’s exhibition “Keep the Shadow Ere the Substance Fade: Mourning During the AIDS Crisis.” The large navy backdrop of canvas is decorated with a full-sized leather pride flagRead more…
Tseng Kwong Chi: A Name That Should Be Known
New York, New York, 1979. Photograph by Tseng Kwong Chi. Courtesy of Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc. It’s not often that an exhibition, not to mention one by an artist whose name I have never heard before, makes me feelRead more…
Keep the shadow, Ere the Substance Fade: On the Keeping and Making of Relics
What to remember a loved one with? Something he used. His hat. A black leather hat, wears make it old but do not bring it down. Two metal chains run from the left side to the right. At the topRead more…
A Public Intimacy: Exploring Communal Mourning in the AIDS Crisis
In all the other galleries of the Block Museum I could take pictures, but not this one: “Keep the Shadow Ere the Substance Fade.” Maybe that name is what drew me to it. I was not allowed to visually preserveRead more…
A Fragile “Party of Life”
Tseng Kwong Chi’s photographs exude a lust for life. Whether he is pranking Moral Majority politicians, hitting the town in drag with his New York City circle, or traveling the U.S. as a Chairman Mao doppelganger, the complex identity politicsRead more…
Protected: Making Sense of Mortality in Keep the Shadow, Ere the Substance Fade
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Spectrum of the Real
The show begins when I enter the room. Tseng Kwong Chi, ready to amaze, pulls the curtain back in a swift motion of pop-star grace. He draws to perform or maybe to fight, welcome or send away. I stand backRead more…
Attempting to Create Art in a Vacuum
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is currently displaying Witness, an exhibition that places the photographer in the role as a witness as he or she goes about experiencing life for others. The exhibit, in itself, is eye opening,Read more…
Revolution and Cinema in Iran
When I walked into Hamid Naficy’s compelling collection of Iranian movie posters at the Block Museum, my reaction to the first poster I saw, The Golden Heel, was, “That’s an Iranian film?” The exhibit features many posters from theRead more…
Meeting Modern Iran in a Movie Poster
All I knew about Tehran was that my mother lived there when was 17 years old. The year was 1972, only seven years before the Islamic Revolution would overthrow the 2,500 year long monarchy in Iran. Yet, as my motherRead more…
Tseng Kwong Chi and the Attempted Politicization of a Landscape
“This land is your land, this land is my land.” America is at its core a paradox, an impossible promise. The land is supposedly open to all, a nation of freedom, and yet also a former colony and imperialist superpowerRead more…