The Aggression of Alien (Alienated) Asian Artists 1. Tammy Tang: Employing Less Materiality

1. Tammy Tang


Tammy Tang
In Sum
Mattress, Salt, Vinegar
[Source: Tammy Tang's tumbler page

Tang's title on this on-line version, In Sum, is different from the exhibition version at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, which is Hers Soul (see below for the image in the gallery). Why did Tang change the title? And why is her phrasing grammatically wrong? Is she trying to be one of those postmodern, witty, artists who love to "play with words" to make up for their artistic deficiencies? I tried to figure it out.

"Hers, Soul" with a comma might have made some sense as "Hers is her soul" but "Hers Soul?" I think it is simply a deficiency in language. It is a mistake.

Below is a photograph I took of the object in the Art Gallery of Mississauga, and the label below is also a shot from the show.


Tammy Tang
Hers Soul
Group Show: More Decent Exposure, June 27- August 23
Living Arts Centre Gallery
Mississauga, Ontario



Tang explains her art in a written statement. Again, her writing is clumsy with small grammatical errors. I wonder if this is how Asians are to speak and write English, developing their own idioms? And Tang's writing is also filled with the cliches of postmodern art: "penetrable boundary," "ephemeral," "embrace the chaos."

My practice explores the penetrable boundary between the physical and the psychological, imperceptible nature of memory. Addressing the relationship between individual's internal feelings, struggles, and conflicts within the surroundings. Develop an ephemeral silence for the viewers to bear, reconfigure the role of uncertainty and embrace the chaos.

Yes, dump a mattress in an Art Gallery, and get the hijacked visitor to deal with that!

Tang cites the following three artists as influences on her "mattress" work:

- Jannis Kounellis

- Ann Hamilton

- Kiki Smith

I tried to find the connection between these artists and Tang's mattress, but, her choices are probably arbitrary, and based on some phrase or commentary they made on art, rather than their actual work.

In any case, here is Jannis Kounellis' row of beds:


Jannis Kounellis

Untitled
2000
14 military hospital beds, 14 steel bodies, 21 steel plates, 41 military blankets
Each bed 200 x 80 cm, each steel plate 200 x 180 cm

Tang may have been influenced by Kiki Smith's "domestic" environment installation:


Or she was simply attracted to the fairy tale/horror story imagery that is now in popular media of young girls raped by wild animals. Even savvy commercials are using this imagery.

This might be closer than the others, After all Tang gave us a dishevelled bed, which she tried to purify with vinegar (clean off the "dirt?"). As usual with contemporary, postmodern art, there is a subliminal, hidden sexual theme in the work.

Here is Kiki SMith's Born, where the rape begat the child, so everything is clean and good:


Kiki Smith (American, born Germany, 1954)
Born, 2002.
Lithograph, 68 x 56 in. (172.7 x 142.2 cm)
Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2003

And Ann Hamilton's simple use of ordinary items may have caught her attention. But then, it could just be as simple as Hamilton's photography on the Mekong River, in the Orient (Laos), may have found something sympathetic in her.


Ann Hamilton
From: Meditation Boat
The abadoned walking meditation halls of Luang Praban's monasteries inspired the boat's form and function

It is interesting that Tang mentions no-where the King of the Mattress (or unmade bed): Rauchenberg! After all, he used a cast-off bed (like hers "found" futon) to construct his object.


Robert Rauschenberg
Bed
1955
Oil and pencil on pillow,
quilt,
and sheet on wood supports,
6' 3 1/4" x 31 1/2" x 8"
Museum of Modern Art, New York

But then, art history beyond the contemporary postmodernism, prior to say, 1995, would be too far back in time!

Here is is an article on four of the beds of the post-modern art era (unmade, unaesthetic, suggestive and even lewd, sexualized), with Rauschenberg's bed as the role model, and with the final line: "Here’s to adding to that history!"

I suppose Tang just might become part of that "history."

Or maybe she was thinking of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, that "avant garde artist" who did a Bed In right here in Canada!


Annie Liebovitz
Photograph for Magazine Cover
Rolling Stone
January 22, 1981

“…Later that afternoon, John was murdered… The way these events played out is an excellent example of how circumstances change a picture. It’s like when you think of the picture and suddenly the photograph has a story”.

Annie Liebovitz is the lesbian photographer who bizarrely was "moved" by this multi-racial couple's "kiss" from Lennon's album cover Double Fantasy. What was it that turned her on? Not the kiss by two heterosexuals, but the unconventionality of the couple.

And rather than repeat this kiss, she went further and imagined them with their clothes off. Here she recounts her interaction with the two at the photo shoot.

So here is Tang's subconscious reference: Yoko Ono as a role model. An aggressive Asian to emulate!

But I believe the real reason that Tang creates such unaesthetic, formless art is because she has no images to emulate.

What does she do: Chinese art or Canadian art; Western art or Eastern art?

Chinese artists in the West have resumed their oriental practices and reproduced their Chinese art. But, their works are bland and repetitive. Others (a few) have tried to incorporate Western art and history into their work, but they don't maintain this for long. So, either they resume their Chinese art, or go the "modern" way, where art becomes a negative representation of society, dark, nihilistic, and critical. Their alien, and alienated, situation forces them in this direction.

I believe this is the direction that Tang has taken, where she feels compelled to create art, but has no subject matter, no images, to describe, reproduce and create.

She says as much here in her very brief biography:

Tammy Tang is a sculptress resides in ON(sic). She was born in Hong Kong. Tang studied Art and Art History, Sociology and Women Gender Studies at University of Toronto. Tang often used the found material as a medium in her work. As they carried significant histories and meanings from their past activities, they provided a rich sensation to the work...The majority of Tang's work reflects her critical view to social and environmental issues that derived from her personal experiences and struggles in the West and East. Tang's work now starting to focus on the employing of less materiality in order to give away a dense vision....

Tammy Tang, in front of her installation:
This is Float, 2015,
Salt, Food Colouring, Cheese Cloth, Various Glasses Containers

Exhibited at the student programHabitual at Sheridan College.

She describes the work thus:

I used the decomposition reaction in salt to create salt crystals that would represent a formation of human body. And the process of crystals decaying, when time goes by, symbolized human ashes formation after body being burnt on funeral pyre. The work becomes a model for acknowledging the inevitability of change in human life.

The Chinese in Ontario

I write in the side explanation of this blog (in one paragraph):

This blog focused for a few years on Islam and Muslims in the West. I then stopped writing here, and focused all my work on
Reclaiming Beauty. Now, I feel we need to revisit this site, to show the slow, progressive, change in our landscape, and of course our society.Please read on to observe with me my observations.

Now, immigration, and non-Western immigrants have entered the fabric of our society so much so that they can pick and chose what they want. They clearly benefit from the economic and "intellectual" freedoms and opportunities (e.g. they don't have to fear the "thought police" and other societal regulators from which they fled in their countries of origin, and can use the tremendous wealth these countries have built over the centuries), but now we begin to realize that they have no intention of leaving those countries behind.

Instead, they are forming their own pockets of societies, resembling as much as they can what they left behind, with language and culture as intact as possible, but within the open and welcoming arms of our Western lands.

Below are my first observations I'm posting here, although I have been posting on these issues both at Camera Lucida and Reclaiming Beauty to some extent.

Now I will dedicate this full blog to those issues.

We must know what we are up against.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I was sitting drinking my coffee and going through my laptop, as these two men came and sat down with a cup of coffee each. They were there at least 1/2 hour with the same cup of coffee, and talking loudly, with gesticulations, in Cantonese.

The whole cafe was overpowered by their noisy discussion.

At one point, I turned around and watched them, to see if it would have any effect.

The man in my view was a much younger man, and it was his older companion that was doing most of the talking. The younger man would periodically break out into girlish giggles. It was clear that there was some hieracichal protocol being kept, and strongly.

After a long 1/ hour, they eventually left, holding on to their by now empty (surely) cups).

Besides the alienating, disturbing presence, how can they feel comfortalbe sitting there with a $1:00 cup of coffee each (at least the Starbucks would have been $2:00) for a good half hour?

The lovely C-Cafe, envisioned and designed by Western Canadians, is now a place for Toronto's inhabitants to enjoy its atmosphere.

As this continues, I can imagine the C-Cafe shutting down. In fact, they have cut down on their menu, including the wine and beer list (the wine was from the Niagara wineries), and closing earlier to benefit the City Hall's employees, which are now beginning to look more and more like this Chinese couple.

I saw the older man upstairs as I asked for some information (on maps and guides) in the administration office.


He was standing by the Chinese woman's ledge. By the time I came closer to take a photograph, he had left. I tried to find out what this woman was doing, and I asked, carefully ("Can I not talk with her, over there? I am in a hurry!"), and found out that she was responsible for building permits for commercial businesses. It looks like another Chinese restaurant, or some kind of convenience store, where English communication will be difficult, and so most likely to serve Chinese clients.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I went back down, to walk through the City Hall, and to make it back out into the square, and was startled by these loud Chinese women, talking loudly and aggressively to each other.

I stopped, and just looked at them as they spoke, and then took out my camera, and took a photograph. I waited as they talked. One of them realized I was watching, and they silenced themselves. I went on my way.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------