Very happy to say that I got a piece into the @soi128 Annual and Exhibition! This one is extra special because I collaborated with @yaoxiaoart who both art directed and wrote the piece this illustration accompanies. It’s an investigation on art, place, and identity through the Buddha of Medicine mural at the @metmuseum and the Guangsheng Temple in Shanxi from where it was removed. Link to the piece at @joysauceofficial in bio 🪷
Thank you to the jury of my peers, and cheers to all artists making the world a better place.
#illustration #art #drawing #soi128 #societyofillustrators
I got two pieces into @soi128 65 Editorial! Big thanks to the jury and judges, and to ADs @edxjohnson and @claire.merchlinsky
I’m especially glad that people saw the first piece for @originalspin ‘s piece in the @nytimes about Asian American heroes, as that one was close to home; it doubles as a portrait of our neighbor Yueh Chien who went missing in Cordova, TN on July 21, 2021.
#art #illustration #drawing #soi65
The speed of which Memphis’ congressional district was just carved up is telling, if not surprising. The reasoning that it is not based on racial demographics is of course coldly practical, if not duplicitous. The combination of those two though has my heart hurting; they’ll strip everything away from you in a flash, and then slap you on the back saying it’s for your own good.
Just heard the goat @tonyleung_official talk about craft, industry, and the unresolvable sadness of being. At @filmlinc and their series The Grandmaster celebrating his work with @criterioncollection . Fr once in a lifetime thing yall. Also we sat right behind Carina Lau!!! ⭐️✨
#tonyleung
Why Capitalism Persists, Jeremy Adelman reviews Capitalism: A Global History, by Sven Beckert for @foreignaffairsmag . Thanks as always to @edxjohnson
Honed in on this line: “From the harvesting of sugar to the harvesting of data…the relentless commodification of the world and of its people in the service of generating profits for the few.”
#illustration #drawing #capitalism
The inimitable Meiko Kaji @kajimeiko_official at @japansociety@jsfilmnyc her first time back in NYC in 45 years. She had 3 flights canceled and still made it to a retrospective of her work. She talked acting, art, and life in the studio system, and then sung (!!!) a couple of numbers from some of her roles.
I caught Lady Snowblood on Friday! It’s truly awesome to see it on the big screen, and then see the artist who powered it some 50 years later.
If you walked down Doyers St. in the last few years, you might have noticed some lanterns with shoes on them that were a part of Light Up Chinatown, an initiative with @pearlrivermart@thinkchinatown and a huge team with countless donors (including Will Smith?) to beautify Chinatown and draw foot traffic in the wake of COVID.
They were recently replaced by non-shoe lanterns because despite all their weatherproofing, they were paper after all. I’m quite surprised they lived as long as they did.
The idea was simple. They asked the viewer: what do you think when you see shoes on the powerlines? Especially given Doyers’ reputation as the previously violent, exotic heart of Chinatown; what is it that you think you’re seeing? A backdrop? A historical preserve? A community?
While they were up, I received a lot of feedback around them. Community members who grew up there said they literally threw shoes on those lines. There were academics doing studies on the Chinese diaspora who were fascinated at the use of a cliched orientalist decoration as a means of interrogation. There were TV shoots for Bling Empire, photo shoots for Fashion Week, innumerable selfies, all with the shoes lurking in the background.
As the Lantern Festival brought the end of LNY festivities, I noticed the opening of countless new stores in the neighborhood, many of them tea shops displacing older stores, or giant cultural institutions inhabiting prominent blocks, previously vacant. I think about what are we collectively seeing as the future of our spaces. Who sees what and why?
I do want to do a show around these ideas, or even with these lanterns again. I did them extremely quickly, over the course of a single day, and it would interesting to revisit it.
China’s Fragile Future: How Secure is the CCP? Andrew J. Nathan reviews Political Trust in China by Li Lianjiang and Institutional Genes: Origins of China’s Institutions and Totalitarianism by Xu Chenggang, for @foreignaffairsmag thanks as always to @edxjohnson
