10/03/2014
2014 marks the third edition of Asian Contemporary Art Week in San Francisco (ACAW-SF). Featuring 30 programs—from exhibitions to screenings, conferences, talks, and performances at numerous venues across the Bay Area—ACAW-SF 2014 celebrates the dynamics of Asian contemporary art practices.
The overarching thematic goal of the ACAW-SF 2014 is to investigate how the role of language (both literally and metaphorically), notions and issues of translation and mistranslation, and their philosophies interact with each other in art and cultural productions in the special context of Asia. Composed of three distinctive panels, the conference An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist serves as the anchor point of the Week by inviting artists, writers, critics, scholars, educators and translators to present recent projects and researches that directly reflect on these issues. Some of the topics include the dynamics of art writing and criticism, its dissemination channels, English as a lingua franca and the concept and dilemma of International Art English (IAE), the mis/translation of archives and local histories, the democratic potential of speech, and the relationship between visual and textual languages in artists’ projects. The intent is to contribute to ongoing reexaminations of cultural and historical specificity when positioning Asia in relation to the San Francisco Bay Area and the global context.
ACAW-SF 2014 continues the collaboration with Et. al. gallery on Alter-Circuit, a project focuses on diasporic practices, particularly those coming into conflict and contact with Asia, where context and identity are always in a state of becoming. Alter-Circuit draws paths into and out of one individual artist’s practice through durational endeavors that last for more than six months and are composed of exhibitions, events, research, writing, publishing, blogging, and more. This year, Alter-Circuit features Beijing and Copenhagen based artist Shiyuan Liu. Working along the borderline of photography, collage, video, film and theater, Liu’s practice explores the limit of perception and experience, reality and fiction, and the rational and the obscure. She invites in-depth reflection on whether globalism is the sum of all human cultures added together, or perhaps an entirely new entity representing the globalized culture.
Other highlight programs and exhibitions include Wish You Were There: Imagined Geographies – Encaustic Paintings, Photographs and Prints at Oakland Asian Cultural Center (organized with Julina Togonon Fine Arts), Twitter Chats, Social Media as Space for Critical Discourse and Art Practiceon Twitter @ PMxPostMeridiem, and An Evening with Robert Zhao Renhui at Kadist Art Foundation.
ACAW-SF 2014 continues its collaborative endeavor among cultural institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. The new names this year include API Cultural Center, Asian American Women Artists Association, Asian Improv aRts, Blackball Universe Gallery, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Chinese Historical Society of America, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Dance Mission Theater, Epekto Art Projects, Gregory Lind Gallery, Julina Togonon Fine Arts, Kearny Street Workshop, Lenora Lee Dance, Montalvo Arts Center, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Post Meridiem (PMx), and SFO Museum.
We would like to express our gratitude to the chairs and consortium members of ACAC-SF. We are grateful as well for the generous support provided by Asia Society Northern California, California College of the Arts and everyone else who has contributed their efforts toward this occasion.
