𨑨迌阿Fei

#wip #instudio

Thank you John Yau and @hyperallergic for this great review! Link in bio •the show is on view till this Saturday•

Spartanburg Art Museum 7 large scale drawings of mine on view traditions: compounded . . . #feili

vol 3 is coming Jun 2, 8-10 pm 17 MacDougal St, Brooklyn RSVP link in bio ✨✨✨ belonging is bodily felt. diasporicity is something at work in every gesture and movement of diasporic being. but bed-stuy is not a stable backdrop against which newcomers arrive and settle. it is itself a place under pressure — long-rooted black life facing displacement, rents climbing, blocks changing, the violence of being made mobile in the place you already belong to. to imagine localization here only as my emplacement would be to repeat the very logic that unsettles this neighborhood. so mahjong and dominoes meet on different terms. both are bodily practices that carry diasporic histories, materializing the social, cultural, political, economic, and affective processes by which people hold place against forces that would move them. the table becomes a small site of solidarity. because we are each, in our own way, practicing presence. practicing relation under unequal conditions. a grammar is forming between us. horizontal, unfinished. i’m grateful. see you in vol.3 (some of the photos in this flyer were taken by @najamakeda )

“The question, from which all the other questions begin” 60x60 inches Mixed Media on Yupo

⏳NEXT TUE MAY 12 8-10PM 📍17 MACDOUGAL ST BROOKLYN 🔗RSVP ALIVE NOW od @od.as.is is one of the people who has been keeping uncle chin’s lounge alive long before i knew the place existed. every wednesday, sometimes with soluna @la.unica.soluna , they gather musicians, singers, rappers, and listeners into that room. the gathering is itself a form of community organizing. they keep making space for people to be heard. when i first went to the lounge, for a women’s performance night, i was, without realizing it, walking into something they had already been tending for a long time. so when od said he would bring dominoes and other games to the tuesday mahjong night, he was, in his way, making the night mutual. dominoes carries deep roots in black american, caribbean, and latin diasporic life. it has its own century of stoop culture, its own tempo and intricate forms of talk and respect. it is a game that holds memory in the hands. the night will be mahjong, dominoes, cards. there will be multiple games at multiple tables, and people will move between them, as people tend to do when given the room. some will learn mahjong. some will teach dominoes. some will play cards they have known since childhood. the kind of knowing that lives in the body and asks no permission. uncle chin will go on tending the room he built. od will go on tending the people he has been gathering for years. i will keep arriving with tiles, and with whatever else i find i am able to offer. what we are building, i have come to think, is a room that knows how to receive what people bring to it. the bridge in bridge ritual is no longer one thing. and perhaps never was. it is several small bridges, made by different hands, holding open different histories, all leading, in their own way, to the same table.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

🛼版畫故事｜Print Stories #09 1-       我唔係嚟徵求你同意 I AM NOT ASKING FOR PERMISSION 2-       我冇責任對你溫柔 I DON’T OWE YOU SOFTNESS  3-       鞋神獸 4-       鞋神獸 2.0 *@_fei.li_ 𨑨迌希望我們將她寫的完整版故事作為一種「語言裝置」，和這組版畫作品一併展出。 可惜我們買的超市小票機失靈了😅，到展覽最後幾天才用普通打印機將文本貼在展場。不知有沒有人站著讀完了這個最長的故事呢⋯⋯ @_fei.li_ hoped the full version of her text could be shown together with the prints as a kind of “language Installation.” Sadly, the receipt printer we bought completely malfunctioned 😅 , so we only managed to print and install the text in the last few days of the exhibition using a regular printer. We still wonder if anyone actually stood there and read the whole longest story… 🔗閱讀完整版語言裝置文本 🔗Full Story (Language/Accent Installation) /document/d/11g8qKjRHkRYal6XRFIhm0vvHigQgQuLbnGQe-OisZdg/edit?usp=drivesdk (Engligh version below) 這套版畫為關於女性憤怒的展覽而作，追索的對象落在語言的階序如何規訓日常相遇。事情起因於港深邊境一幕看似尋常的場景：一名男子因優惠券被拒而暴怒，對兩位年輕女店員以言語羞辱；顧客隊伍維持著一種程序性的沉默；時間被算得比尊嚴更值錢。表面看來只是小小口角，現場卻露出更大的權力骨架：性別化的攻擊沿著水平面滑行，先撞上最脆弱的身體；效率如何被默認為更高的價值，尊嚴在這裡顯得奢侈；語言怎樣於地緣政治中迴旋。當我開口介入時，卻發現，發聲本意是一種支援，也可能把風險推回那些被勞動位置釘在原地的人；她們的出口太少，代價卻太快落到她們身上。   回應這些觀察，我搭起一個多語的結構，讓它們以不同權力語域運作，彼此交纏，牴觸。英語以粗硬的宣告出現，一方面對抗父權對女性溫柔的要求，另一方面也撞擊藝術世界對英語的倚賴：英語常被當作全球可讀性的門禁裝置，決定誰被看見、被理解、誰能被順利流通。粵語浮在標題處，把作品放回香港的口語場域與歸屬政治；在這裡，口音常常先於內容作出判決，接受與疑慮之間的距離，有時只是一個聲調。普通話以繁（正）體的敘事文本出現，形成檔案式的稠密：帶傷, 也在城市主權不斷移位的脈絡裡帶著地緣政治的電荷。   作品的展示不提供無縫的翻譯翻譯。每一種語言佔據不同的空間職務。理解因此起伏不平，權威在觀看途中失去穩固的座椅。語言重量被刻意重新分配之後，女性的憤怒在這裡呈現為一種結構性的存在：權力如何經由日常言談流通；女性與離散社群如何不得不持續校準語言。為了生存和抵抗、也為了建立連結。   關於版畫作者的介紹 About the Printmaker 🔥 𨑨迌*穿梭於語言的縫隙，在異質的時間性與文化節奏間游牧。透過感知細微張力在空間中的纏繞，她試圖捕捉既定敘事腳本下的抗性，使語言與身體轉化為共振流變的場域。 *「七桃」是閩南語特色詞彙，讀音為 qiet-tôo 通常寫作「𨑨迌」或「七逃」），意為「玩耍」、「遊玩」。釋義：閩南語、台語中指「玩、玩耍」。   Wandering through the seams of language, Fei nomads between heterogeneous temporalities and cultural rhythms. Attuned to the subtle tensions, she seeks to capture the resistances that flicker beneath social scripts, transforming language and the body into a field of resonant flux.

we are back next Tuesday! rsvp link in bio some reflections: i’m thinking mahjong as a body that travels: a body of rhythm, touch, speech, etiquette, memory, and relation that becomes local again only by attaching itself to a specific place and its people. i imagine mahjong in bed-stuy as a sinophone practice that is unfinished until it becomes localized through new relations. in shu mei shih’s discussion of comparative minority studies, she argues that sinophone studies can foreground “the horizontal axes of minority-to-minority relationality” rather than only the classic majority/minority binary. this matters because my question is not about how mahjong assimilates into dominant white america. it is about what happens when a sinophone practice is localized in relation to historically black neighborhood life. shih gives conceptual language for precisely that move. the question becomes: what does a minority cultural form become when it is no longer organized primarily by china-versus-america, but by a horizontal encounter between racialized communities living a shared locality under unequal conditions?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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join us next tuesday ♡ link in bio part iii i want to teach people for free: long-time neighbors, immigrants, people of color, anyone curious enough to sit down. but I also want to ask those who come to support the business: commit to buying at least one drink. it acknowledges that if we gather in a place sustained by someone else’s labor, then that gathering must return something material. care cannot remain only emotional. to mean anything, it must take form. ultimately, i have come to think justice is not built solely through demands made of the state. it is also built through forms that prepare people to remain present to one another. and in this case, one more thing: a bar already practicing a form of care the city does not know how to count. in the end, a mahjong table in uncle chin’s bar would not change the world in any grand or immediate way. but it might alter the scale at which the world becomes livable, through the stubborn making of places where people can still build with their hands, shelter one another’s memories, and remain.

I began to imagine starting a mahjong social (change) club in uncle chin’s bar. mahjong, to me, is beyond leisure. it is a social form that creates proximity and negotiated coexistence. it does not itself create justice; it enables conditions in which trust and mutual obligation become more possible. it allows people to stay in the room. bed-stuy is historically a black neighborhood, and that history matters profoundly. one must begin here, with a kind of listening: dense black social structures—stoops, churches, salons, barbershops, mutual aid, music, and local rituals of watching out for one another. bed-stuy does not need an outside script of community. it would be a mistake to arrive in bed-stuy with the idea that one is bringing community to it. the community is already here. it has been here for a long time. what one might humbly hope to offer is something more modest: a few additional forms through which people living parallel lives might occasionally enter a common rhythm. so, a mahjong table in uncle chin’s bar would possibly be a small addition to an already living neighborhood grammar. if introduced carelessly, it could become exactly the wrong thing: a fashionable asian object or a shallow diversity performance. but if with patience and hospitality, placed in conversation with the neighborhood’s already existing forms of black, caribbean, african, and immigrant social life, it might become something else. solidarity matters, within the long and unfinished relation between black communities and immigrant communities of color in this country. this is an old conversation and, in many ways, an unresolved one. these communities have often been placed in competition with one another, even as the city extracts labor from each and renders each vulnerable in ways that turn out to be more interconnected than they appear. racial capitalism, one begins to understand, is very good at arranging things so that interests that ought to converge instead come apart. continued in images (full text) more to come

there are places in bed-stuy that are more than businesses. uncle chin’s bar is one. he arrived from nigeria thirty years ago. four years ago, he built this place from scratch. i call him uncle because @watchmytone called him that, out of respect. it is something older than resemblance. something i recognized before i could explain it. it belongs to a grammar that many immigrants know in their bodies long before they know how to describe it in language. but before i speak of his warmth, i want to speak of his labor. he made this place with his own hands. literally, piece by piece. he polished the long bar counter by hand. he made the plant wall in the front. he built the structure in the backyard. everywhere in the space one senses effort that has passed through the body first: sanding, lifting, arranging, rethinking, trying again. he made an environment. there is something in this that feels very familiar to me. immigrants are often left to rely on themselves in ways that become so complete they seem natural. one learns because there is no other choice. one becomes a builder, designer, repairer, accountant, cleaner, host, translator, all in one life. there is no one role. there is only what must be learned for the thing to survive. uncle chin’s creativity is everywhere in the room. and this room, made with such effort, has become a small gem in the neighborhood. what moved me, perhaps more than i expected, was seeing how well this creativity had been received by local musicians. i did not know the bar until i went there for a women’s performance night organized by @la.unica.soluna (another one this wednesday! please go! ticket link in her bio). that was my first entry into the space. afterward, i came to know about @od.as.is and the wednesday gatherings @notorious.wednesdays there. i began to return. what astonished me was the aliveness of it, and how unguarded. people gathered, sang, shared songs, rapped back and forth as if conversation had found a better medium than words alone. a room that had become, through repetition, a vessel. continued in images (full text)