thurs 4/16/2009: karen & indigo, together for the first time
Please join me next Thursday at Columbia College for this event I helped to organize. I've been interested in Karen's work for a long time. Indigo is an old friend and comrade.
Here's the text from the poster, more or less:
Indigo Som is a Berkeley-based artist who has explored the far reaches of the Chinese restaurant phenomenon in a number of projects. In one ongoing series of investigations, she visits local establishments in those parts of the US otherwise nearly devoid of Asian American population. With camera and blog, she has toured the mountain West, the rural upper Midwest, and a belt of small towns across the deep South. Her work has been exhibited in shows at the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, and the Asia Society in New York.
Karen Tam is an installation artist who has explored the aesthetics of Chinese restaurants in her ongoing Gold Mountain Restaurants work. Often drawing on the memories and experiences of the older generation of restaurant owners and employees, she recreates the classic interiors we have come to associate with potstickers and mooshu. Her work has been shown at Collyer Bristow Gallery in London, YYZ Artists’ Outlet in Toronto, and Centre A in Vancouver. She is currently a Ph.D candidate in cultural studies at Goldsmiths College in London.
This will be the first time Indigo Som and Karen Tam appear at the same event. On Thursday evening they will deliver presentations on their work, take questions, and riff endlessly on the place of Chinese and other Asian restaurants in the American landscape, their role in the Western experience of Asian culture, and the many twists and turns in how diasporic Asians use restaurants to find economic and social niches in the US, Canada, the UK, and other places outside of Asia.
Indigo Som is a Berkeley-based artist who has explored the far reaches of the Chinese restaurant phenomenon in a number of projects. In one ongoing series of investigations, she visits local establishments in those parts of the US otherwise nearly devoid of Asian American population. With camera and blog, she has toured the mountain West, the rural upper Midwest, and a belt of small towns across the deep South. Her work has been exhibited in shows at the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, and the Asia Society in New York.
Karen Tam is an installation artist who has explored the aesthetics of Chinese restaurants in her ongoing Gold Mountain Restaurants work. Often drawing on the memories and experiences of the older generation of restaurant owners and employees, she recreates the classic interiors we have come to associate with potstickers and mooshu. Her work has been shown at Collyer Bristow Gallery in London, YYZ Artists’ Outlet in Toronto, and Centre A in Vancouver. She is currently a Ph.D candidate in cultural studies at Goldsmiths College in London.
This will be the first time Indigo Som and Karen Tam appear at the same event. On Thursday evening they will deliver presentations on their work, take questions, and riff endlessly on the place of Chinese and other Asian restaurants in the American landscape, their role in the Western experience of Asian culture, and the many twists and turns in how diasporic Asians use restaurants to find economic and social niches in the US, Canada, the UK, and other places outside of Asia.
Comments
Creative subject. Does she compare the American restaurants to the ones in China? There is a restaurant in Boston (it's probably Korean, though) which has some insanely beautiful statues - I couldn't stop staring at them through the whole meal.
Wish I could be there for the presentation! (I try to find these things on YouTube but of course not all of them are taped).