The Lesser of Two Genocides

Violated: Women in Holocaust and Genocide, 2018

Chapter in the catalogue for the exhibition "Violated: Women in Holocaust and Genocide," presented at Ronald Feldman Gallery, May 12 - April 12, 2018.

Aisthesis, 2022

What is the nature of memorials? Traditionally, memorials have been conceptualized as lasting entities preserving memories of our shared pasts. This paper challenges this view. My aim is to retheorize our practices of memorialization by examining the role that ephemerality plays in experiential memorials. Rather than fixed structures of meaning, experiential memorials are unstable careers whose significance depends on viewers' performative engagement. I provide evidence for my thesis by developing a critical interpretation of Qi Kang's Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall (NMMH) as an example of experiential memorial. The fragmented nature of the here and now frees visitors' experiences. Like the wind propelling Benjamin's Angelus Novus into future and progress, the ephemerality of NMMH's experience unchains its significance from the constriction of dominant narratives of vengeance and resentment. If liberated temporally, the experience of memorials may help us not only to never forget, but also to find reconciliation.

The China Quarterly, 2007

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2013

Culture Politics , 2023

Art Histories of a Forever War is an exploration of modern art in postwar Taiwan and its enduring resonances. To understand this historical milieu, the exhibition unpacks and contextualizes Taiwan's modern art as part of a Cold War convergence of art, design, and technology.1 On a global scale, and in relation to the American military-industrial complex and its attendant neo-imperialism (Immerwahr 2020: 13–144), the post–World War II and early Cold War period of the 1940s–60s has been described as “a period of accelerated commercialization, of decolonization and—in the context of advanced aesthetic practice and thought—of considered reassessment of the effects and legacies of the modernist avant-garde” (Martin 2005: 4). Modernity in this period was transformed by wartime techno-scientific developments and the competition for cultural supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The primary goal of the course is to provide students with a set of skills for analyzing visual materials of Asian and Pacific culture. The aim is not only to enhance the appreciation of art, but also to foster a critical approach to visual culture in general, by examining both the formal qualities of a work of art, and anchoring each work in its cultural and historical settings. A range of art historical methodologies will be discussed. Through readings, discussions, and museum visits, students will learn to think critically and independently while gaining new knowledge. Students will also have the opportunity to examine original and replica works of Asian art in St. John’s Chin Ying Asian Library collection. This activity is intended to build their confidence and skill in making first-hand observations and description of artwork, and it will be linked to a research and exhibition design project in which students will draw upon their experiences visiting and critiquing exhibitions of Asian and Pacific art in New York City.

The 4th Peking University International Doctoral Student Forum of Art Studies, 2022

This paper discusses the power of antiquity in politically charged exhibitions for contemporary China, where the economy is flourishing, nationalist sentiment is rising, and international tensions are high. The first exhibition under examination is “The Journey Back Home” at the National Museum of China in 2019 which highlighted important repatriated cultural relics by the People’s Republic of China since 1949. The display, narration and representation of the exhibition will be examined to understand how antiquity was being utilised to celebrate national achievements convey the political message, and enhance national pride by creating contrasts between the prosperous present and the humiliated past, “Self” and “The Others”. In this way, why the repatriation of cultural relics matters to China, as well as the world, will be analysed. On the other hand, the International Exhibition of Chinese Art at Burlington House London in 1935 displayed Chinese art with the support of the government of the Republic of China. As politically significant as the former exhibition, it was the first time that the authority of China took advantage of its antiquities to demonstrate the charm of the country and earn its international standing. Nowadays, most exhibits that participated in the 1935 Exhibition are housed in the Palace Museum in Taipei, which adds another layer of political meaning to these national treasures. Based on the critical reading of extensive literature, media coverage and images, this paper provides a critical read of the two exhibitions, trying to understand how the events, where national historical myths were enacted, disseminated, and consumed by the public, created a political discourse through antiquity. Finally, the curatorial rationales of the exhibitions are analogised to demonstrate and significance of antiquity for China in today’s contexts. This paper is awarded "Specially Recommended Paper" at the 4th Peking University International Doctoral Student Forum of Art Studies, 2022.

Killer Images. Documentary Film, Memory, and the Performance of Violence, 2012

The Phnom Penh-based prison Tuol Sleng is certainly the most infamous institution of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979). Formerly a school it became in the hands of the political police of Democratic Kampuchea a torture and execution centre were more than 14,000 Cambodians lost their life. The inmates were photographed as soon as they were brought in and their picture attached to their confession file. When Tuol Sleng was transformed into Museum for Genocidal Crimes in 1980 the photographs were put on display. Over years this administrative record of extermination has been globally circulated through all kinds of media and into various settings. The black and white mug shots have become icons of the Cambodian Genocide. My paper looks at their re-appropriation into contemporary artworks. Since the late Nineties several artists, Cambodians and non-Cambodians alike, have created pieces (multimedia, video, installation, performance) using the mug shots. My paper examines the visual and material strategies by which they try to undermine ‘the monocular seeing that conflates the camera with a weapon’ (Marianne Hirsch) and create less tainted forms of bearing witness and remembering. Referring to the notion of ‘genocidal images’ (Thierry de Duve) and its significance within the aesthetic realm, it reflects on how art helps clarify the formation of iconic images and the way such process affects forms of memory, production of historical knowledge, and identity politics.

Music and Architecture as Political Tools, 2021

Art and identity politics are intertwined. Art has a central role in politics and in creating public discourse. Moreover, most importantly – Art is a media tool that influences politics and social agendas. Any effort to disconnect the two is like attempting to summon oil from water. In a normative approach, Art is an inseparable form of media vital for conflict education, memorialization, peace building, and tolerance - and it ought to lead in that way.