WOMEN: From Her to Here
Eleven LGBTQ+ contemporary artists and art collectives explore queer and feminist spaces in the Asian diaspora in a new group exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center
WOMEN: From Her to Here is an art exhibition and series of public programs that explores agency and belonging in queer and feminist communities. On view at San Francisco's Chinese Culture Center (CCC) February 19 - August 28, 2021, the group exhibition, centered on Asian diasporic perspectives, features video and film works, mixed media installation, photography, painting, and more by a diverse array of LGBTQ+ and women artists and art collectives from the Bay Area, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and beyond. Several new works have been commissioned for this exhibition.
This is CCC's third iteration of WOMEN (a Mandarin homophone meaning both 'women' and 'we'). The ongoing series is a platform to explore feminism, gender diversity, and sexual equality. Previous iterations explored feminist visual culture in China and symbols of power in Chinatown.
Bringing together artistic projects and archives from queer and feminist artists and activists, the exhibition affirms the importance of cultivating safe physical and psychological spaces as a way to preserve queer and feminist creativity and cultural growth. Curator Hoi Leung says of her vision for the upcoming presentation, "I want to present feelings and experiences rooted in the nonbinary, where individuals are given the freedom to define who they are, what their safe spaces are like, and what their communities can be. Beyond sexuality, I want to present 'queerness' as a sensibility, as a way to interpret and question our surroundings. Asian queer cultural production exists in a unique, yet overlooked, space between mainstream queer discourse and Asian cultural identities."
CCC Executive Director Jenny Leung speaks of the importance of the series, "I am proud that CCC is a home and safe space dedicated to the growth of artists to be the voice of the community, and to uplift to the forefront the voices of LGBTQ+, women, and emerging artists. WOMEN is a bold voice for equality and social justice."
Artists' Work
Bay Area filmmaker Madeleine Lim, who is also the founding Executive Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, contributes the award-winning 1997 short documentary Sambal Belacan in San Francisco. In it, Lim focuses on three first-generation immigrant lesbians from Singapore grappling with how to create home and belonging in San Francisco. Combining scripted scenes, cinema verité, poetry, interviews, and newsreel footage, the mixed-genre film visually conveys the multi-layered experiences of immigrant Asian lesbians living in the U.S. In 1998, the film was banned in Singapore due to its frank portrayal of nationality, race, and sexuality.
Hong Kong-based artist Nicole Pun shows a series of photographs of hands made between 2013-2018 entitled In & Out Series. Pun invited lesbian participants to demonstrate how they touch and make love to their partners for these abstract, but intimate portraits.
New York-based spoken word performance artist and activist Brad Walrond, who also served as the Director of Education for the HIV Treatment and Prevention Department at the Minority Task Force on AIDS, offers his 2019 video and audio work Blood Brothers: Yuan Chu Min, a cross-discipline work that explores the connection between language, HIV/AIDS discourse, stigma, and public health. Developed during an artist residency in Taiwan, the poetry narrative of the work combines written and digital interviews with Taiwan's HIV/AIDS social activists.
Bay Area-based Heesoo Kwon contributes a commissioned mixed media installation based on her Leymusoom Project, an ongoing project she began in 2017 to create an autobiographical feminist religion. Kwon uses the digital space to reframe personal history and trauma to build a feminist utopian world.
Bay Area-based Tina Takemoto, whose work explores Asian American queer history, creates a new work Insatiable Margaret Chung, an experimental film exploring queer desire among women in San Francisco in the 1930s-40s. It is inspired by Margaret Chung (1889-1959), the first American-born Chinese female physician. Known as "Mike" during her college years, Chung experimented with masculine and feminine gender presentation. Although "closeted" throughout her life, Chung had intimate and erotic relationships with the lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow and the entertainer Sophie Tucker, the last of the Red Hot Mamas.
Three artists from Taiwan are included in the exhibition including Yao Hong, a transgender visual artist who contributes a mixed media installation, Erotic Wallpaper (2019-2020). Artist Huang Mengwen's photographs and video from her ongoing series entitled Suits and Corsages, focuses on gender nonconforming women who wore suits in Tawian in the 1950s. Chen Han-Sheng's new mixed media installation, When I was a Child, reflects on a famous bullying incident of a feminine boy in Taiwan, whose death led to the enactment of the Gender Equality Education Act in that country.
Bay Area-based Chelsea Ryoko Wong is commissioned to create a new series of paintings centered on real and imagined queer spaces in Chinatown.
Also on view is a collection of books and zines from Queer Reads Library in collaboration with Mixed Rice Zines. Established in 2018, Queer Reads Library was a response to the censorship of ten LGBTQ-themed books for children and young adults in Hong Kong's public libraries in June 2018. It is a collaboration between artist-curator Kaitlin Chan, artist-writer Rachel Lau, and artist-publisher Beatrix Pang.
Beijing-based Luka Yuanyuan Yang and New York-based Carlo Nasisse offer a recent 2019 film, Coby and Stephen Are in Love, that focuses on a retired nightclub dancer in San Francisco's Chinatown. This work will be available for the online version of the exhibition for a limited time only. Visitors are encouraged to check CCC's website for dates. It will be available to view in person at the CCC gallery when it reopens.
Programming
WOMEN: From Her to Here is accompanied by a series of virtual programs presented with local and international partners. CCC is organizing several public events under the theme of "Building Creative Safe Spaces," collaborating with Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (Bay Area), Queer Reads Library (Hong Kong & Vancouver), Shanghai Queer (Shanghai), and Coexist Art Project (Taiwan).
Programming includes a zine-making workshop led by API Equality-Northern California's Dragon Fruit Project, a panel discussion hosted by Queer Reads Library, the U.S. debut of Shanghai Queer presented by director Xiangqi Chen, and a discussion by Taiwanese artists and curators Chen Han-Sheng and Liou Shing-You on their exhibition series Coexist and queer curation in Asia.
show less
Eleven LGBTQ+ contemporary artists and art collectives explore queer and feminist spaces in the Asian diaspora in a new group exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center
WOMEN: From Her to Here is an art exhibition and series of public programs that explores agency and belonging in queer and feminist communities. On view at San Francisco's Chinese Culture Center (CCC) February 19 - August 28, 2021, the group exhibition, centered on Asian diasporic perspectives, features video and film works, mixed media installation, photography, painting, and more by a diverse array of LGBTQ+ and women artists and art collectives from the Bay Area, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and beyond. Several new works have been commissioned for this exhibition.
This is CCC's third iteration of WOMEN (a Mandarin homophone meaning both 'women' and 'we'). The ongoing series is a platform to explore feminism, gender diversity, and sexual equality. Previous iterations explored feminist visual culture in China and symbols of power in Chinatown.
Bringing together artistic projects and archives from queer and feminist artists and activists, the exhibition affirms the importance of cultivating safe physical and psychological spaces as a way to preserve queer and feminist creativity and cultural growth. Curator Hoi Leung says of her vision for the upcoming presentation, "I want to present feelings and experiences rooted in the nonbinary, where individuals are given the freedom to define who they are, what their safe spaces are like, and what their communities can be. Beyond sexuality, I want to present 'queerness' as a sensibility, as a way to interpret and question our surroundings. Asian queer cultural production exists in a unique, yet overlooked, space between mainstream queer discourse and Asian cultural identities."
CCC Executive Director Jenny Leung speaks of the importance of the series, "I am proud that CCC is a home and safe space dedicated to the growth of artists to be the voice of the community, and to uplift to the forefront the voices of LGBTQ+, women, and emerging artists. WOMEN is a bold voice for equality and social justice."
Artists' Work
Bay Area filmmaker Madeleine Lim, who is also the founding Executive Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, contributes the award-winning 1997 short documentary Sambal Belacan in San Francisco. In it, Lim focuses on three first-generation immigrant lesbians from Singapore grappling with how to create home and belonging in San Francisco. Combining scripted scenes, cinema verité, poetry, interviews, and newsreel footage, the mixed-genre film visually conveys the multi-layered experiences of immigrant Asian lesbians living in the U.S. In 1998, the film was banned in Singapore due to its frank portrayal of nationality, race, and sexuality.
Hong Kong-based artist Nicole Pun shows a series of photographs of hands made between 2013-2018 entitled In & Out Series. Pun invited lesbian participants to demonstrate how they touch and make love to their partners for these abstract, but intimate portraits.
New York-based spoken word performance artist and activist Brad Walrond, who also served as the Director of Education for the HIV Treatment and Prevention Department at the Minority Task Force on AIDS, offers his 2019 video and audio work Blood Brothers: Yuan Chu Min, a cross-discipline work that explores the connection between language, HIV/AIDS discourse, stigma, and public health. Developed during an artist residency in Taiwan, the poetry narrative of the work combines written and digital interviews with Taiwan's HIV/AIDS social activists.
Bay Area-based Heesoo Kwon contributes a commissioned mixed media installation based on her Leymusoom Project, an ongoing project she began in 2017 to create an autobiographical feminist religion. Kwon uses the digital space to reframe personal history and trauma to build a feminist utopian world.
Bay Area-based Tina Takemoto, whose work explores Asian American queer history, creates a new work Insatiable Margaret Chung, an experimental film exploring queer desire among women in San Francisco in the 1930s-40s. It is inspired by Margaret Chung (1889-1959), the first American-born Chinese female physician. Known as "Mike" during her college years, Chung experimented with masculine and feminine gender presentation. Although "closeted" throughout her life, Chung had intimate and erotic relationships with the lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow and the entertainer Sophie Tucker, the last of the Red Hot Mamas.
Three artists from Taiwan are included in the exhibition including Yao Hong, a transgender visual artist who contributes a mixed media installation, Erotic Wallpaper (2019-2020). Artist Huang Mengwen's photographs and video from her ongoing series entitled Suits and Corsages, focuses on gender nonconforming women who wore suits in Tawian in the 1950s. Chen Han-Sheng's new mixed media installation, When I was a Child, reflects on a famous bullying incident of a feminine boy in Taiwan, whose death led to the enactment of the Gender Equality Education Act in that country.
Bay Area-based Chelsea Ryoko Wong is commissioned to create a new series of paintings centered on real and imagined queer spaces in Chinatown.
Also on view is a collection of books and zines from Queer Reads Library in collaboration with Mixed Rice Zines. Established in 2018, Queer Reads Library was a response to the censorship of ten LGBTQ-themed books for children and young adults in Hong Kong's public libraries in June 2018. It is a collaboration between artist-curator Kaitlin Chan, artist-writer Rachel Lau, and artist-publisher Beatrix Pang.
Beijing-based Luka Yuanyuan Yang and New York-based Carlo Nasisse offer a recent 2019 film, Coby and Stephen Are in Love, that focuses on a retired nightclub dancer in San Francisco's Chinatown. This work will be available for the online version of the exhibition for a limited time only. Visitors are encouraged to check CCC's website for dates. It will be available to view in person at the CCC gallery when it reopens.
Programming
WOMEN: From Her to Here is accompanied by a series of virtual programs presented with local and international partners. CCC is organizing several public events under the theme of "Building Creative Safe Spaces," collaborating with Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (Bay Area), Queer Reads Library (Hong Kong & Vancouver), Shanghai Queer (Shanghai), and Coexist Art Project (Taiwan).
Programming includes a zine-making workshop led by API Equality-Northern California's Dragon Fruit Project, a panel discussion hosted by Queer Reads Library, the U.S. debut of Shanghai Queer presented by director Xiangqi Chen, and a discussion by Taiwanese artists and curators Chen Han-Sheng and Liou Shing-You on their exhibition series Coexist and queer curation in Asia.
WOMEN: From Her to Here
Eleven LGBTQ+ contemporary artists and art collectives explore queer and feminist spaces in the Asian diaspora in a new group exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center
WOMEN: From Her to Here is an art exhibition and series of public programs that explores agency and belonging in queer and feminist communities. On view at San Francisco's Chinese Culture Center (CCC) February 19 - August 28, 2021, the group exhibition, centered on Asian diasporic perspectives, features video and film works, mixed media installation, photography, painting, and more by a diverse array of LGBTQ+ and women artists and art collectives from the Bay Area, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and beyond. Several new works have been commissioned for this exhibition.
This is CCC's third iteration of WOMEN (a Mandarin homophone meaning both 'women' and 'we'). The ongoing series is a platform to explore feminism, gender diversity, and sexual equality. Previous iterations explored feminist visual culture in China and symbols of power in Chinatown.
Bringing together artistic projects and archives from queer and feminist artists and activists, the exhibition affirms the importance of cultivating safe physical and psychological spaces as a way to preserve queer and feminist creativity and cultural growth. Curator Hoi Leung says of her vision for the upcoming presentation, "I want to present feelings and experiences rooted in the nonbinary, where individuals are given the freedom to define who they are, what their safe spaces are like, and what their communities can be. Beyond sexuality, I want to present 'queerness' as a sensibility, as a way to interpret and question our surroundings. Asian queer cultural production exists in a unique, yet overlooked, space between mainstream queer discourse and Asian cultural identities."
CCC Executive Director Jenny Leung speaks of the importance of the series, "I am proud that CCC is a home and safe space dedicated to the growth of artists to be the voice of the community, and to uplift to the forefront the voices of LGBTQ+, women, and emerging artists. WOMEN is a bold voice for equality and social justice."
Artists' Work
Bay Area filmmaker Madeleine Lim, who is also the founding Executive Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, contributes the award-winning 1997 short documentary Sambal Belacan in San Francisco. In it, Lim focuses on three first-generation immigrant lesbians from Singapore grappling with how to create home and belonging in San Francisco. Combining scripted scenes, cinema verité, poetry, interviews, and newsreel footage, the mixed-genre film visually conveys the multi-layered experiences of immigrant Asian lesbians living in the U.S. In 1998, the film was banned in Singapore due to its frank portrayal of nationality, race, and sexuality.
Hong Kong-based artist Nicole Pun shows a series of photographs of hands made between 2013-2018 entitled In & Out Series. Pun invited lesbian participants to demonstrate how they touch and make love to their partners for these abstract, but intimate portraits.
New York-based spoken word performance artist and activist Brad Walrond, who also served as the Director of Education for the HIV Treatment and Prevention Department at the Minority Task Force on AIDS, offers his 2019 video and audio work Blood Brothers: Yuan Chu Min, a cross-discipline work that explores the connection between language, HIV/AIDS discourse, stigma, and public health. Developed during an artist residency in Taiwan, the poetry narrative of the work combines written and digital interviews with Taiwan's HIV/AIDS social activists.
Bay Area-based Heesoo Kwon contributes a commissioned mixed media installation based on her Leymusoom Project, an ongoing project she began in 2017 to create an autobiographical feminist religion. Kwon uses the digital space to reframe personal history and trauma to build a feminist utopian world.
Bay Area-based Tina Takemoto, whose work explores Asian American queer history, creates a new work Insatiable Margaret Chung, an experimental film exploring queer desire among women in San Francisco in the 1930s-40s. It is inspired by Margaret Chung (1889-1959), the first American-born Chinese female physician. Known as "Mike" during her college years, Chung experimented with masculine and feminine gender presentation. Although "closeted" throughout her life, Chung had intimate and erotic relationships with the lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow and the entertainer Sophie Tucker, the last of the Red Hot Mamas.
Three artists from Taiwan are included in the exhibition including Yao Hong, a transgender visual artist who contributes a mixed media installation, Erotic Wallpaper (2019-2020). Artist Huang Mengwen's photographs and video from her ongoing series entitled Suits and Corsages, focuses on gender nonconforming women who wore suits in Tawian in the 1950s. Chen Han-Sheng's new mixed media installation, When I was a Child, reflects on a famous bullying incident of a feminine boy in Taiwan, whose death led to the enactment of the Gender Equality Education Act in that country.
Bay Area-based Chelsea Ryoko Wong is commissioned to create a new series of paintings centered on real and imagined queer spaces in Chinatown.
Also on view is a collection of books and zines from Queer Reads Library in collaboration with Mixed Rice Zines. Established in 2018, Queer Reads Library was a response to the censorship of ten LGBTQ-themed books for children and young adults in Hong Kong's public libraries in June 2018. It is a collaboration between artist-curator Kaitlin Chan, artist-writer Rachel Lau, and artist-publisher Beatrix Pang.
Beijing-based Luka Yuanyuan Yang and New York-based Carlo Nasisse offer a recent 2019 film, Coby and Stephen Are in Love, that focuses on a retired nightclub dancer in San Francisco's Chinatown. This work will be available for the online version of the exhibition for a limited time only. Visitors are encouraged to check CCC's website for dates. It will be available to view in person at the CCC gallery when it reopens.
Programming
WOMEN: From Her to Here is accompanied by a series of virtual programs presented with local and international partners. CCC is organizing several public events under the theme of "Building Creative Safe Spaces," collaborating with Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (Bay Area), Queer Reads Library (Hong Kong & Vancouver), Shanghai Queer (Shanghai), and Coexist Art Project (Taiwan).
Programming includes a zine-making workshop led by API Equality-Northern California's Dragon Fruit Project, a panel discussion hosted by Queer Reads Library, the U.S. debut of Shanghai Queer presented by director Xiangqi Chen, and a discussion by Taiwanese artists and curators Chen Han-Sheng and Liou Shing-You on their exhibition series Coexist and queer curation in Asia.
read more
Eleven LGBTQ+ contemporary artists and art collectives explore queer and feminist spaces in the Asian diaspora in a new group exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center
WOMEN: From Her to Here is an art exhibition and series of public programs that explores agency and belonging in queer and feminist communities. On view at San Francisco's Chinese Culture Center (CCC) February 19 - August 28, 2021, the group exhibition, centered on Asian diasporic perspectives, features video and film works, mixed media installation, photography, painting, and more by a diverse array of LGBTQ+ and women artists and art collectives from the Bay Area, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and beyond. Several new works have been commissioned for this exhibition.
This is CCC's third iteration of WOMEN (a Mandarin homophone meaning both 'women' and 'we'). The ongoing series is a platform to explore feminism, gender diversity, and sexual equality. Previous iterations explored feminist visual culture in China and symbols of power in Chinatown.
Bringing together artistic projects and archives from queer and feminist artists and activists, the exhibition affirms the importance of cultivating safe physical and psychological spaces as a way to preserve queer and feminist creativity and cultural growth. Curator Hoi Leung says of her vision for the upcoming presentation, "I want to present feelings and experiences rooted in the nonbinary, where individuals are given the freedom to define who they are, what their safe spaces are like, and what their communities can be. Beyond sexuality, I want to present 'queerness' as a sensibility, as a way to interpret and question our surroundings. Asian queer cultural production exists in a unique, yet overlooked, space between mainstream queer discourse and Asian cultural identities."
CCC Executive Director Jenny Leung speaks of the importance of the series, "I am proud that CCC is a home and safe space dedicated to the growth of artists to be the voice of the community, and to uplift to the forefront the voices of LGBTQ+, women, and emerging artists. WOMEN is a bold voice for equality and social justice."
Artists' Work
Bay Area filmmaker Madeleine Lim, who is also the founding Executive Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, contributes the award-winning 1997 short documentary Sambal Belacan in San Francisco. In it, Lim focuses on three first-generation immigrant lesbians from Singapore grappling with how to create home and belonging in San Francisco. Combining scripted scenes, cinema verité, poetry, interviews, and newsreel footage, the mixed-genre film visually conveys the multi-layered experiences of immigrant Asian lesbians living in the U.S. In 1998, the film was banned in Singapore due to its frank portrayal of nationality, race, and sexuality.
Hong Kong-based artist Nicole Pun shows a series of photographs of hands made between 2013-2018 entitled In & Out Series. Pun invited lesbian participants to demonstrate how they touch and make love to their partners for these abstract, but intimate portraits.
New York-based spoken word performance artist and activist Brad Walrond, who also served as the Director of Education for the HIV Treatment and Prevention Department at the Minority Task Force on AIDS, offers his 2019 video and audio work Blood Brothers: Yuan Chu Min, a cross-discipline work that explores the connection between language, HIV/AIDS discourse, stigma, and public health. Developed during an artist residency in Taiwan, the poetry narrative of the work combines written and digital interviews with Taiwan's HIV/AIDS social activists.
Bay Area-based Heesoo Kwon contributes a commissioned mixed media installation based on her Leymusoom Project, an ongoing project she began in 2017 to create an autobiographical feminist religion. Kwon uses the digital space to reframe personal history and trauma to build a feminist utopian world.
Bay Area-based Tina Takemoto, whose work explores Asian American queer history, creates a new work Insatiable Margaret Chung, an experimental film exploring queer desire among women in San Francisco in the 1930s-40s. It is inspired by Margaret Chung (1889-1959), the first American-born Chinese female physician. Known as "Mike" during her college years, Chung experimented with masculine and feminine gender presentation. Although "closeted" throughout her life, Chung had intimate and erotic relationships with the lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow and the entertainer Sophie Tucker, the last of the Red Hot Mamas.
Three artists from Taiwan are included in the exhibition including Yao Hong, a transgender visual artist who contributes a mixed media installation, Erotic Wallpaper (2019-2020). Artist Huang Mengwen's photographs and video from her ongoing series entitled Suits and Corsages, focuses on gender nonconforming women who wore suits in Tawian in the 1950s. Chen Han-Sheng's new mixed media installation, When I was a Child, reflects on a famous bullying incident of a feminine boy in Taiwan, whose death led to the enactment of the Gender Equality Education Act in that country.
Bay Area-based Chelsea Ryoko Wong is commissioned to create a new series of paintings centered on real and imagined queer spaces in Chinatown.
Also on view is a collection of books and zines from Queer Reads Library in collaboration with Mixed Rice Zines. Established in 2018, Queer Reads Library was a response to the censorship of ten LGBTQ-themed books for children and young adults in Hong Kong's public libraries in June 2018. It is a collaboration between artist-curator Kaitlin Chan, artist-writer Rachel Lau, and artist-publisher Beatrix Pang.
Beijing-based Luka Yuanyuan Yang and New York-based Carlo Nasisse offer a recent 2019 film, Coby and Stephen Are in Love, that focuses on a retired nightclub dancer in San Francisco's Chinatown. This work will be available for the online version of the exhibition for a limited time only. Visitors are encouraged to check CCC's website for dates. It will be available to view in person at the CCC gallery when it reopens.
Programming
WOMEN: From Her to Here is accompanied by a series of virtual programs presented with local and international partners. CCC is organizing several public events under the theme of "Building Creative Safe Spaces," collaborating with Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (Bay Area), Queer Reads Library (Hong Kong & Vancouver), Shanghai Queer (Shanghai), and Coexist Art Project (Taiwan).
Programming includes a zine-making workshop led by API Equality-Northern California's Dragon Fruit Project, a panel discussion hosted by Queer Reads Library, the U.S. debut of Shanghai Queer presented by director Xiangqi Chen, and a discussion by Taiwanese artists and curators Chen Han-Sheng and Liou Shing-You on their exhibition series Coexist and queer curation in Asia.
show less
Date/Times:
Chinese Culture Center (CCC)
77 Upcoming Events
750 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
The Best Events
Every Week in Your Inbox
From Our Sponsors
UPCOMING EVENTS
Great suggestion! We'll be in touch.
Event reviewed successfully.