The title Friend and Foe suggests the perception of others and navigating our relationships in the world. In this exhibition artists from the US, China, India and Myanmar were invited to consider the meaning of southerner in relation to their work. The focus of our discussions is the personal connection in which artist interpret geopolitical borders. As we question and unfold our own southerner’s frame of mind, the artists in Friend and Foe seek to create an alternate map of historical fragments, social practice, cultural heritage, and contemporary spirituality.
The meaning of southerner is riddled with intricate networks. My own view as a southerner is complicated by migration away from the small town in China where I was born that is now overtaken by sprawling city development. Impressions of the humid and warm furo south is the background to anthropomorphic sculptures in Pupa Land installation where I created a mixed topography based on my own nostalgia for the south. Namesake objects made from urushi lacquer hang like chrysalis, resting amongst photographs taken during visits to southern China, Myanmar and Thailand.
Born in Memphis Tennessee, John Shorb (USA) rethinks the southern identity through large-scale drawings and prints based on political sentiments found in nineteenth- century newspapers from the southeastern United States. In addition to working with text in the Reunion series, Shorb includes lacework enlargements with archived material to express the fragmentation that exists between the public and private self and the desire to mask and cover up the unseemly.
Historic tensions are also explicit in the Partisan Wall series by Vishwa Shroff (India). The artist has decided to observe through drawings and humor the reworking of urban built-up in modern India. In this new work, the artist will illustrate the significance of Indso-saracenic, Indo-Gothic and the Bombay Art Deco movements in contrast to Mumbai’s frantic rush towards modernity as the city rebuilds colonial Bombay into the post-independence urban center of Mumbai.
While some of the participating artists in Friend And Foe focus primarily on visual identity, others focus on issues specific to boundary and shifting geopolitical identity made possible by travel and social progress. In Flags of No Nation, Christopher Myer (USA) takes syncretic forms of vexillary originating from the Global South specifically flag-based art from Ghana, and re-imagines the emotional and physical plight of refugees and migrants. The Survival Project places the fundamental quest for nourishment within a larger historical context, showing the depth and capacity of human resilience. This multidisciplinary project by visual artist Rania Ho, culinary writer Thy Tran and app developer Bryan Wu (Bay Area, USA) cumulates food tastings, lectures and sales of limited editions online into a dynamic social practice artwork.
Transformation of the self through material and process is another feature of Friend And Foe. Dwight Cassin’s (USA) A Conference of Birds is based on a medieval Sufi text in which a group of birds travel from Persia to China, the artist unpacks a multiplicity of forms and expressions through the materials of wood and metal.
Wei Weng
Curator
SCU class of 2002