In Surface Relations Vivian L. Huang traces how Asian and Asian American artists have strategically reworked the pernicious stereotype of inscrutability as a dynamic antiracist, feminist, and queer form of resistance. Following inscrutability in literature, visual culture, and performance art since 1965, Huang articulates how Asian American artists take up the aesthetics of Asian inscrutability-such as invisibility, silence, unreliability, flatness, and withholding-to express Asian American life. Through analyses of diverse works by performance artists (Tehching Hsieh, Baseera Khan, Emma Sulkowicz, Tseng Kwong Chi), writers (Kim Fu, Kai Cheng Thom, Monique Truong), and video, multimedia, and conceptual artists (Laurel Nakadate, Yoko Ono, Mika Tajima), Huang challenges neoliberal narratives of assimilation that erase Asianness. By using sound, touch, and affect, these artists and writers create new frameworks for affirming Asianness as a source of political and social critique and innovative forms of life and creativity.
Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Inscrutable Surfacing 1
1. Invisibility and the Vanishing Point of Asian/American Visuality 25
2. Silence and Parasitic Hospitality in the Works of Yoko Ono, Laurel Nakadate, and Emma Sulkowicz 47
3. Im/penetrability, Trans Figuration, and Unreliable Surfacing 73
4. Flatness, Industriousness, and Laborious Flexibility 105
5. Distance, Negativity, and Slutty Sociality in Tseng Kwong Chi's Performance Photographs 135
Conclusion: Something Is Missing 165
Notes 187
Bibliography 207
Index 221
